


The Woodsman

by Seiya234



Series: Transcendence AU [8]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Transcendence AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:34:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, Henry gains a name and reputation for himself</p><p>(and wishes he never had)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Over the years, Henry had gone on various missions and hunts with Dipper and Mabel. It wasn't all the time; especially when the triplets were born and someone needed to stay home and guard them.  
  
(When he did go Henry was the voice of reason, the calm one, advocating mercy over death, handcuffs over a broken kneecap.  
  
Shocking to anyone but the three of them, Mabel was the one Henry had to talk down the most, rather than her brother, the literal demon.)  
  
Thus, it wasn't until Henry was 42 that he became The Woodsman.  
  
\-----  
  
Surprisingly it was Acacia who noticed something was amiss first. While Acacia herself would be the first to admit that she was not the most sensitive of people, even she got bad vibes off of the new school librarian, Mrs. Brower.  
  
"It's like she doesn't want to be here at all," she told her mother one day while Mabel doing Acacia's hair into microbraids.  
  
"Well, I wasn't fond of high school either. Made me feel all womp womp until we came out here," her mom said, finishing off one braid and starting on another.  
  
"No it's not that-I meant Gravity Falls period."  
  
A hairpin fell from her mother's mouth in shock. "NO!"  
  
Acacia agreed with the sentiment. "I know right?! She tries to squirt holy water at the little mini pegasi that come in through the windows, and she glares at all of us kids every time any of us are done with our demonology class and she doesn't even to seem to really know how to be a librarian."  
  
"She would drive your dad nuts," Mabel chuckled as she finished off the last few braids.  
  
"Turn around and let me see," Mabel asked, and Acacia got up and did some pirouettes around the living room.  
  
Mabel clapped. "Perfect! What's next on our chore list today?"  
  
Acacia looked at the ceiling for a second. "Use the grappling hook and all that wire we found to make a sweet zip line course in the forest?"  
  
Mabel held up a hand for her daughter to high five. "Atta girl."  
  
Before Acacia could run off to get the wire, Mabel laid a hand on her eldest's shoulder.  
  
"I think it'll be fine but...watch out for Hank and Willow when you're in the school library?"  
  
Acacia nodded (Mom got what it meant being the oldest sibling-even if it was only older by two and four minutes respectively).  
  
"Cool, now let's see where your Grunkle Stan hid the grappling hook this time."  
  
\-----                             

“I think the new librarian is a creeper Dad.”

Henry looked over at his son. They were watching Mabel, the girls, and Dipper zoom across the new zip line course Acacia and Mabel had spent last Saturday installing. Next to them, asleep on the porch rocker, was Grunkle Stan, a beer forgotten by his hand (the doctor had told him that he needed to stop drinking and Stan had just laughed in his face and that was when Henry decided that they needed to go home).

“Well, that’s a shame. She give my profession a bad name?”

Hank looked a bit exasperated. “ _Dad_ I’m serious. She creepy stares at everyone and I’ve caught her doing it to Willow and I’ve seen Mrs. Brower hanging out with a bunch of other people that look just as creepy and-“

The fourteen year old ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

Henry clapped Hank on the back.

“Thanks for telling me Hank. You said you caught her staring at Willow?”

“Yeah…though to be fair, she stares at everyone. And mutters under her breath a lot-I think she’s praying.”

Henry looked to where Dipper was totally showing off and zip lining down hanging by his feet and using his wings to go faster.

“I’ll say something to your uncle, have him drop by and keep an eye on things.”

Hank nodded. “Thanks Dad.” They both flinched at the sound of Mabel’s war cry warbling through the forest.

\-----

But as soon as Henry asked Dipper to check the school librarian out, things settled down. Almost as if she knew the kind of impression she was giving off to the student body, Mrs. Brower started to chill out. She didn’t become friendly, per se, but she also stopped glowering at everything, clutching at the cross around her neck and even permitted the pegasi to start coming back into the library (the pixies, with their…their… _rude_ gestures, were still banned).

Over the next month however, Mrs Brower started to report that an increasing number of books in the library’s supernatural section were going missing. Students who had last checked out the books were hauled into the principal’s office, but to no avail as all swore up and down that they had nothing to do with the missing books.

(If only because stealing a book about magic seemed like the kind of thing that would come back to bite you on the ass down the line).

And Reina Castañeda, the girl who Acacia kind of sort of (totally) had a crush on, had seen her at the grocery store with a group of equally dour and bitter looking people, handing out pamphlets that read “Transcend into Hell”. It was all, as she told Acacia later by the bleachers, in Comic Sans font so it was really hard to take seriously. Not to mention everyone going in and out of the store gave them a wide berth (extremist groups like the New Canaan Methodist Church had tended to stay out of Gravity Falls, and everyone in town was distinctly _not impressed_ ).

There did seem to be more and more of them coming in every day though, walking around and giving everyone and everything the stink eye and muttering darkly.

And they had rented a trailer at Caney Patch on the outskirts of town and put up a sign that said “Crisis Intervention Center”, whatever _that_ meant.

Still, it was pretty easy to blow off Dour Brower (as the kids had started to call her behind her back) and that weird church group thing she was with.

Until it wasn’t.

\-----

Of course when shit went down, it was on the weekend that Mabel was in Sydney as a keynote speaker for a conference on summoning, and Stan was five hours away fishing in a cell phone dead zone. Not to mention that Dipper was barely in the house-this close to Halloween and the kids’ birthday the next day if he wasn’t being summoned hither and tither, Dipper was working the triplet’s presents.

Henry realized something was wrong when his son and older daughter burst in to the living room, disheveled and bloody.

He burst out of Grunkle Stan’s recliner, the Halloween themed cooking shows he was watching on PBS completely forgotten about. “Kids, what’s wrong, what happened, where is your sister?”

Acacia bent over coughing, as Hank managed to wheeze out “We were raking like you asked us to, and…and…and this car pulled up, and Dour Brower came out with a guy we think is her husband and-“

“They took Willow before she could burn them or say anything and Hank tried to grab her back but they had a taser and I jumped in between Hank and Mr. Brower and I should have grabbed Willow instead and Daddy I’m _sorry_ -“

Without thinking, Henry had grabbed Acacia and Hank into an embrace, hugging them hard enough to make both of them squeak.

Inside he felt....nothing?

No, not nothing, just cold.

Very, very cold.

(because his children had been in danger before, but by the time he had heard about it or was aware of it Mabel and Dipper had either rescued them or were on the way to doing so and he was the one to hold down the fort so he had never been the first responder as it were and-)

Grabbing Acacia and Hank under each arm like they were five again, instead of fourteen and all gangly limbs, Henry took his children through the kitchen and into the Library, where he kicked the soda machine until it opened, exposing Stan’s old lab. He walked down the stairs and when he got to the landing, he put his children down.

They didn’t say anything. They saw the look on his face.

“Stay here until I get back,” he tersely told them. He grabbed the axe he kept down there and ran back up the stairs, closing the soda machine door behind him.

He went into the kitchen and grabbed the place mat that had Dipper’s circle on it. He sliced his palm with the tip of his axe and slammed it onto the little mat.

“Dipper, I need you, _Willow_ needs you, please-“ and finally his voice broke a bit, “please come now.”

Dipper swirled into existence next to him. “Henry, I was kind of in the middle of fighting Flag’narb the Unmerciful and-“

Dipper paled, realizing what the axe and the look on Henry’s face meant, and feeling within him Willow starting to tug on their link, scared (not completely terrified, not yet, but definitely worried and giving off a vibe of “uncle dipper I need you _now_ ”).

“I’ll go and-“

Dipper started to get ready to blip where Willow was but was stopped by Henry’s hand grabbing his wrist.

“I’m coming with you.”

Unbidden, thoughts of the times when he first was getting to know Henry and his brother in law passed out or puked when Dipper came home covered in blood came to mind. Or how Henry was always talking Mabel and him out of their fu-no, _not_ fun, vengeance, and all the times Henry (and to be fair, Mabel too) wouldn’t squish the spiders and cockroaches that came into their house but captured them and-

But then Dipper took a look at his brother in law. He was ready to go, kitted out in the big flannel jacket Henry kept on a hook for hiking during the winter, worn blue jeans, and heavy work boots. The axe in his hand was wickedly keen, especially because Henry made sure to sharpen it once a week. The aura around him roiled, all desperate grey and worried yellows and blues, and above all a quiet, steady, _furious_ red that he had never seen from Henry before.

“If you think,” Henry calmly stated, still holding Dipper’s arm in a death grip, grinding the bones of Dipper’s wrist together, “that you are going to leave me behind while you save my daughter, you are very mistaken.”

Dipper looked at Henry’s hand on him then up into his brother’s eyes.

“Okay. Let’s go and get Willow.”

\----

Henry was doing his best to prepare himself for the worse when they blipped into existence where Willow was being held. He knew he was going to have to think fast and on his feet because it was going to be crazy and he needed to help his daughter.

Even expecting that, within the first twenty seconds of them entering the dark room where apparently his youngest child was, Dipper was howling with pain and sucked into the picture perfect summoning circle laid out on the floor, six shotguns were leveled at Henry’s chest and-

“DAD!”

Oh god, there was his girl, his littlest child, his daughter, kneeling on the floor next to a kiddie pool filled with water.

Two men were there, keeping her on her knees. One of the men had his hand fisted in Willow’s hair. Her face and front was soaked, almost like…almost like-

“We’ve been trying to exorcise the demon out of her for the last ten minutes,” a voice drawled behind him. Henry turned as best he could to face the voice, trying to block out the howls of his brother, the wheezing from his daughter (not yet, not yet, keep it together for a little longer).

A man dressed in a powder blue suit stood there. His brown shoes were immaculately shined, his black hair perfectly coifed, a tattered and well-read Bible in his hands. He smiled at Henry, and it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m Ed Brower; I think you know my wife, Edith? She works at the school library.”

Henry was completely and utterly speechless, blown away by the unmitigated gall of this man to talk to him like they weren’t trying to drown a child ( _his_ child, his daughter) in this room.

Ed looked over at where Dipper was currently writhing in pain in the circle. “I’m glad to see the books Edith brought here did some good; obviously, we had to burn them, but sometimes it’s necessary to fight fire with fire...” His face screwed into a grimace. “Especially when dealing with demons.”

Dipper said something under his breath that Henry couldn’t make out but Ed laughed. “No demon, you will not be getting out of that circle any time soon; we have the power of the Lord on our side.” Ed paused. “And four weeks preparation and mathematical instruments for circle drawing too, but mainly the power of the Lord.”

He turned back to Henry, still encircled by the six men and women and their shotguns. Henry had been taking the minute Ed was gloating at Dipper to survey his surroundings. It looked like they were in a trailer. The windows were boarded up so he couldn’t look outside to see but Henry thought he knew where they were. Caney Patch, home to the newest outpost of the New Canaan Methodist Church.

Henry should have realized the threat they were going to present sooner. Hell, the police or the mayor or _someone_ in town should have realized it sooner. (Thinking about it later, from his outsider perspective, Henry realized that this was probably a bit unfair. Unlike the town he grew up in and Corvallis, Gravity Falls had been mostly untouched with the waves of extremists and hate that emerged in the wake of the Transcendence).

Ed reached over to a table, groaning under the weight of the pamphlets they had been attempting to hand out these past months, and plucked a packet of paper from it. He flipped through it a bit and as he went through the pages Henry saw pictures, names, blurbs.

“Aha, I knew you looked familiar. You’re a little down on our list of Collaborators, Henry Corduroy-“

Henry couldn’t help himself. “It’s Pines, actually.”

Ed huffed. “Mr. Corduroy, I know you have been bewitched by that…that… _thing_ you call a wife, but please, have some pride in yourself, be a man.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw Dipper go very, very still. Almost….almost….

Henry straightened up out of his habitual slight slump, the better to tower over the gun bearers and Brower in front of him. “Please,” Henry asked, “let my daughter go. Keep me, do what you will with me, but let my daughter go.”

“Oh but we planned on it,” Ed drawled. “We just need to get that demonic influence out of her first.”

Without warning, the man holding Willow by the hair shoved her face down into the water. Willow struggled and kicked but was firmly held down by the other accomplice. Terrible, awful sounds of gurgling and bubbling came from the kiddie pool.

Things happened all too quickly again, except this time the church members were on the receiving end.

Dipper burst out of the circle. “D͍̬̪I̼͖̱̬͇͈̠͡D̲̺̺͉̤ ͡YO̡̠̣̙̯U̱̳̜̪̳ ̷̞R̼̼̝̤̝̙͟ͅE̷̼̣̞A̭̳̦ͅL̪L͇͍̪̱̲̪͓͜Y͏͚̖̘͙ ͖̻ͅT̼̻̠̰̟H̦I̳̹̙̩̫NK̜̘ ̺̦͝I̫̹͙͎̠ ͏C͈̫̘̬͍̱̰͡O̺̯̜UL̨͓D̯̲̞ ͈͢B̗̺Ḛ̱̠́ ̙͙̰͉̠̱́B̜̞̣͚͠O̬̜̼̥U̯͉͇̩͚̭̬͠N̛ͅD̰̭͖̥̼?͕́” he roared.

With that the barrels of the guns twisted towards their bearers, letting Henry run over to Willow.

The man holding his daughter down he lifted and threw against the wall, and the man attempting to murder his daughter he brought the handle of his axe down on his head, knocking him instantly unconscious.

Henry pulled Willow up from the pool and cradled her in his arms. She was pale and her lips were blue. Willow tried to breathe now that she was out of the water but she could only gasp futilely, a sick thin whistling sound coming from her throat. She was having an asthma attack.

Henry didn’t even need to call Dipper over, in a flash he was there next to the two of them. One or two parishioners tried to approach them but were flung back as soon as they tried.

Henry looked at Dipper. “Take care of her; I got this.”

Dipper nodded, taking Willow from Henry’s arms and laying one hand on her chest, syncing his breathing in time with Willow’s, gold and blue fire glowing around both of them.

Before Henry could get up, Dipper’s other hand snaked out and grabbed Henry’s free hand.

“You’re going to need this,” Dipper said and fire lit their entwined hands and-

Burning. Everything burned.

But that was fine because Henry felt like burning, like making sure that these, these- he couldn’t even manage to call them people, his fury was so great- _things_ didn’t go near his friends, the creatures that lived in the forest and town, his family (because the first page of that pamphlet had the heading “Do Not Save; Take Down Immediately” and Mabel’s name was first on there).

Distantly, Henry heard screams and shouts, commands and guns being loaded and cocked, felt things twisting and tearing inside of him, things shifting outside of him, but he didn’t even care, all he cared about was making sure the things that had hurt his daughter, tried to hurt his brother, wanted to kill his wife, were dead and gone.

All Ed and his flock saw for a second was the demon and the collaborator wrapped around the little witch, their backs to them as they became wreathed in infernal fire. Something appeared to curl out from Corduroy’s head but it could have been the fire.

“Soldiers,” Ed barked, “be ready to fire.”

The man slowly got up, leaving his daughter with the demon (distantly, Ed was shocked at the depravity on display before him).

He turned and despite himself the blood ran cold in Ed Brower’s body.

Henry was sheet white, as if all the blood had drained from his body. His clothes had become tattered in the aftermath of…of…of whatever unholy deal he had just made, and they blew around him. The handle of his axe had sprouted, tendrils of wood climbing up the man’s arm, becoming a part of him. From his head sprouted a pair of…not quite antlers, but something akin to them, wood and bone branching out of his hair. His eyes were gone, replaced by two pits of shadow. His head was crowned by that same infernal fire that was currently covering the demon and the witch and the blade of his axe burned with the same.

Deep down, Ed knew with sudden bone deep certainty that he was only minutes left for this world.

Aloud he yelled, “Kill him!” not caring about decorum or appearances any more.

Things went rapidly, horribly, downhill from there.

The thing that used to be Henry Corduroy turned and slammed his axe down on the hands of Brother Charles, who had been holding the witch down. He screamed, high and thin and reedy, but there was no blood, no blood at all, cauterized by the flames coming from the axe.

Ed had a sudden premonition of how things were going to go.

The man cut a swath through his followers, bashing teeth in with the handle of his axe, breaking kneecaps, and above all, cutting off hands and feet.

There was no blood.

(Henry didn’t want to kill them. He wanted them to suffer. He wanted them to lead miserable, painful lives from this day forward. And more than anything else, Henry wanted to make sure none of them could ever hurt anyone, ever again.)

Henry had Ed backed into a corner, his followers screaming and crying and moaning all around him, severed limbs everywhere, and was raising his axe when he heard-

“Daddy?”

Without a second thought Henry flung the axe away from him (embedding it in the floor a centimeter from Ed’s hand) and ran over to Willow and Dipper.

Willow was still scarily pale, and there were dark rings under her eyes, and she was obviously beyond shaken, but she was alive, she was breathing, she was _alive._

She smiled weakly from Dipper’s lap.

“What….what big antlers you have Dad.”

Henry could say nothing, picking up his daughter and hugging her tightly, feeling her steady, even breathing.

Distantly, he could feel the blood return to his face, the antlers melting back into his skull.

(even more distantly, the certain knowledge that that change was part of him, now and forever).

He stood up as the last of Dipper’s lent power left him, Willow cradled in his arms.

“What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

Henry, as shaken and high on adrenaline as he was, still managed to cock an eyebrow at his brother in law.

“Really?”

Dipper smiled. It showed off two rows of razor teeth in his mouth. “This bill will be taken care of by someone else. Or-“and Dipper glanced out to the room around him “-multiple someones.”

Henry nodded, and started to walk out of the room.

As he left, he heard Dipper say, “I find it funny for people so concerned with matters of the soul s̷̴o͝u͜l͜ ̷ţ̛͡h̴a̵͟t͡͝ ̴y͞o̵̧u̸r̡͢s̛ a̮̬͙͔̲̳͠r̘e̘͚̞ ̗̣̱̜̰̫͉a̬ļ̪̱l̷͍͔̱̣̣͉ ̝s͙̮̖o̷͍̱̩͍̺̙͔ tͫͤwͭ͏̰į̲̙̳̬͓̺ͥ̀̈́ͨͅș͎̟̜͊͑t͍͍̹̼̖ḛ̊ͦͧ̉̐̓̌ḑ̥͎̦̠̱̦̥ͪͪͮ̽ ̷̪̜̫̲̜̲ͬ̍ͩ͊̇âͫͦn͈̩͖̼̬͙ͫ̐̌̓d̮̯̻͇͙̹͇́ ̰̖̰̤̇͆̀͋̾ͬͫ͘s̸͕̟͋́̎̄͗ͅm̴̥͇ͧ̒̅̽̃a̡̗̮̓lͫl̪͈͈͑͌̊̈̓͒ͧ…̝̰̯ͨ̎͒”

\----

Later, after Dipper had come in with blood around his mouth and sparking with energy, and a message had been left for Stan, and Mabel contacted (she was on a plane from Sydney even now. She refused to let Dipper get her-“Please, stay there Dipper, please-“Mabel started to cry and Henry felt his heart break), and the kids were all upstairs, asleep in the same bed for the first time since they were nine, Henry sat down on the couch, and put his head in his hands.

He began to shake, uncontrollably.

Dipper came into the living room, and sat next to Henry, wrapping his wings around him.

“That was close,” Henry finally managed to say.

“I know,” was all Dipper could say himself.

On the news, the anchorwoman was giving a report how the headquarters of the New Canaan Methodist Church in Denver had mysteriously burned down. And then fell into a freak sink hole. That even more freakishly sealed itself up afterwards.

Despite himself, Henry couldn’t help but grin slightly.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

(when Mabel came home the next morning, she found her husband and brother asleep on the couch, Dipper curled around Henry.)


	2. Coda

Henry Pines had antlers.

They were bone and wood, they spiraled from his head.

Sometimes they were close to his scalp, barely popping out. 

Other times they were massive, a halo of winding branches all around his head.

Only Dipper and Willow could see them regularly, but they were there, soul deep, irrevocably a part of him and sometimes they would pop up in his shadow.  
When he was mad, the hands Henry had taken would swing from the points and tusks.

In the spring, little flowers grew from them, roses and lilies and daisies..

(When Mabel found out, she suggested that he go as Randolph the Red Headed Reindeer for next Halloween. Henry was not amused.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel reacts.

She had spent all day hugging and kissing on the kids.

(and she knew the triplets must have been equally upset because they didn’t even make the vague fuss they usually did)

She had spent the last three hours watching over them, sitting outside of their door with her bat at hand and Dipper on her other side.

And when her husband touched her on the shoulder and said, “Mabes, its okay, come to bed love,” Mabel wiped a tear away and went downstairs with her husband to their room, leaving her twin to guard the kids.

(and Dipper spent the night constantly castigating himself, thinking of all the things he could have done to make this have not happened)

Mabel spent the next twenty minutes sobbing hysterically into Henry’s chest in their bed, because their daughter almost died, because Mabel wasn’t here to protect them and if she couldn’t do that what was she good for?

The next eight hours after Mabel had drifted off to sleep, she dreamt of her husband, crowned by a rack of antlers, and the hands of those who tried to harm their family dangling from the tips and branches of them.

(Mabel shouldn’t have felt as comforted as she did but. well.

She never claimed to be a nice person.)


	4. Chapter 4

Three days afterwards, Willow, still home from school recovering, looked at Henry with that far off gaze that he had come to associate with her using the Sight and told him, “You know you still have antlers right?”

Henry, staying home to watch Willow (not that she wasn’t old enough to stay at home on her own but, after what had happened…) looked up from the cookbook he was flipping through for new ideas.

“What?” he said, in what was not his finest moment.

Willow huffed briefly and sat up from where she was laying on the couch under a blanket of a Technicolor unicorn shooting fire from its eyes (one of Mabel’s, of course).

“You don’t feel it Dad?”

She reached over to Henry’s end of the couch and waved her hand in the air on either side of his head.

“How about now?”

Henry was about to answer in the negative but….but a vague tingle on his scalp, a twinge in his soul, a shiver up his spine.

Huh.

Willow went to make another pass by his head and he gently grabbed her hand and put it down. “I believe you sweetie,” Henry said.

Stan walked into the room and Willow looked at him.

“Grunkle Stan, do you know Dad has antlers now?”

Stan looked at Henry. “Think you can make them solid so I can dry my shirts out on them?”

Willow giggled, like she was five again and not fourteen (it did Henry’s heart good to hear his girl able to laugh like that still, especially after Monday).

“GRUNKLE STAN!”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This started as an ask to this question "Are there any side effects to Woodsman Mode?" and turned into a lil ficlet

1\. Antlers

so even though we’ve been getting a million hc’s about them being physical to hang stuff off of and have birds perch on them, and flower petals drifting on to Henry’s plate at dinner, honestly 99% of the time they’re only visible to other supernatural creatures/those with the Sight. They usually are only physical if Dipper makes them so (for important things like family holiday pictures or laundry or just to fuck with Henry) or when he is actually The Woodsman.

That being said, they do pop up in his shadow when he’s really upset or stressed. Luckily Henry is a chill dude so that’s not too often.

Finally, they are deeply, irrevocably part of his soul. Dipper can always tell when a soul is the reincarnation of Henry because of the antlers. (Depending on the kind of personality Henry has in that life, sometimes they’re more like deer antlers, sometimes moose, sometimes like a ram, etc).

2\. The Woodsman

Henry doesn’t get into as many supernatural shenanigans as his wife and kids.

That’s not who he is.

Henry is the vanguard, the rear, the backup, the one who watches over the Shack and anyone inside while Mabel and Dipper and (God forbid) one of the kids do their thing. He patches up wounds and holds Mabel in bed at night after a particularly bad case and prods Dipper to stop moping around.

Sometimes though Henry finds himself out in the mud and muck and pain and the sick knowledge that someone he loves is going to be hurt and that’s when the Woodsman comes out.

After the first time, Henry doesn’t need to call on Dipper for the Woodsman to appear, but draws upon that energy through the link they now have. Dipper at this point, even though he’s in his 40s, still has a lot to learn. He has absolutely terrifying amounts of power but lacks the fine motor skills, as it were, to harness them properly.

So, say, when you can’t help your brother in law fight because you need to make sure your niece doesn’t die of an asthma attack and you lend the slightest bit of your power to your brother, you still may send down more than you meant to have, and now you and him are permanently bound and oops.

When the Woodsman needs to come out, Henry can pull on that original energy Dipper lent him that day.  
(Once or twice, and thank god it’s once or twice only, Henry pulls more, does more and it takes Dipper and the kids and Mabel to bring Henry back to himself. Dipper finds it hard to pull back because if there is one weapon humans have over demons it is the power of their will, and will is something that Henry possesses in spades.)

The Woodsman never kills.

In a way that’s worse.

(Sometimes he takes more than your hand or foot. Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes it’s all.

Sometimes the Woodsman cuts higher)

3\. Dreams

Henry can feel the weight of every cut he has made in the air around his head.

He can reach up, touch a dangling hand, know everything the hand did that merited him taking it.

Henry remembers the time or two he became lost, unable to find his way home until the light of the ones he loved brought him back.

The worse dreams are when that doesn’t happen, and he stays lost, rambling, hurting-

Henry wakes up from those with not only a Mabel lump next to him but a Dipper lump on his other side.

(“I could eat those for you,” Dipper shyly offered one day.

Henry shook his head. He couldn’t let himself off that easily.)

4\. Apples

Once every two or three years Henry gets apple blossoms instead of Mabel’s favorite flowers

(“That’s kind of sappy,” Acacia once commented.

"The soul is sappy," Dipper told his niece)

And in the fall there are apples. Not a lot but enough for Henry to make a deal to split them with Dipper in return for making them corporeal so they can be eaten.

(Well, that was the second time they came in. The first time he wasn’t convinced entirely that the apples weren’t pieces of his soul that would be destroyed.)

The whole thing was really fucking weird but they were the best apples he ever had.

 

5\. Dipper

Henry found Dipper moping in the kitchen.

Henry knew Dipper was upset because he even had their cat Pookie on his lap and was absentmindedly petting him.

Henry leaned against the doorway.

"What’s wrong Dipper?"

Dipper refused to look at him

"Dipper, tell me before you make the walls bleed."

Dipper didn’t look at Henry but instead mumbled into Pookie’s fur, “I ruined you and I’m so sorry.”

Henry looked at Dipper for a second.

Then he walked over and smacked him upside the head.

"OW HENRY-"

Henry held up a finger. “One, you haven’t. Willow would not be here, Acacia would not be here, if you hadn’t helped me to help them.”

"But, your nightm-"

Henry folded his arms. “Don’t you think you have enough on your plate without taking on more?”

"But-"

"No butts Dipper. Besides-"

Henry started to poke Dipper in the shoulder. “I can touch you now. You got 20 years of payback coming at you.”

At that Dipper smiled feebly, still not convinced but not in the despair spiral he was before.

Henry meant every word he said. And one day Dipper would see that too.

Until then Henry would settle for playing keep away with Dipper’s hat and making him have to hover for it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some eye squick in this chapter, as an fyi.

“How is it you always seem to get in trouble?”

Acacia looked up from painting her girlfriend’s toe nails (yellow and green of course) in the living room of the little house they rented, and into Reina’s eyes.

“Hey! I don’t get into _that_ much trouble.”

Reina, taking a drink from her soda, almost did a spit take.

“ _Bullshit!”_

“Ah! Reina, stay still, I almost painted your entire little toe.”

Reina settled herself back against the couch, and stilled the foot that was propped up on her girlfriend’s lap.  She went on however.

“Acacia, in the four months we’ve been here in Eugene, you’ve punched out the star running back, almost blown up the kiln with that plate you were trying to make for your uncle, got the brownies to leave Pi Kappa Psi, rode a Pegasus over campus and threw down candy, had Willow spike the punch with something crazy wild at the hockey party, turned-“

“Okay, okay! I….engage in lots of shenanigans.”

Reina, presenting her other foot for Acacia to paint, raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, is that what we are calling them now?”

Acacia sniffed, and dipped the brush into the nail polish jar.

“I will have you know love that Derek should know that grabbing people’s boobs without their permission is bad, and I’m really sorry about the kiln, and the frat brothers were really treating Jen and her family way hella bad so they needed to get out of there and the Pegasus was a completely random thing that I didn’t plan-“

Reina tapped her with the foot that was done on Acacia’s leg.

“Chill bae. I know. It’s just….”

Reina looked out the window, to the pine trees and campus in the distance. In the next room, she could hear Willow making dinner for the three of them

(Reina always was amazed that Willow didn’t mind living with her sister and her sister’s girlfriend; she was damn sure if her and Ramon tried to live with each other one of them would have been dead within a week).

“I’m scared,” Reina finally said, “Scared you’re going to run into something you can’t fight or talk your way out of, one day.”

Acacia finished Reina’s left foot and put the nail polish up on the table beside her. She took Reina’s right foot in her hand and began to rub it. Reina made a sound that was best described as a meeble.

“You…are trying to distract me from my point Acasita.”

“No, I was planning on giving you a foot rub no matter what! Honest.”

Acacia kept massaging Reina’s foot. “Besides, I can handle myself. Always have, always will. And I’m not so proud that I won’t call on Uncle Dipper if I need to.”

“But…we aren’t in Gravity Falls any more Acacia. Things are different there.”

At that Acacia could say nothing.

In the kitchen Willow couldn’t help but overhear, and tried to ignore the vague sick feeling of foreboding she felt in her stomach. It was probably from eating at her friend’s dorm instead of having lunch at the apartment. Yeah. That was it.

(Reina’s words would haunt Acacia, when she woke up a month later the night after her birthday in the hospital, and could only see out of one eye.)

———

For the triplet’s nineteenth birthday, everyone decided to celebrate at Willow and Acacia and Reina’s little bungalow in Eugene. Uncle Dipper brought their parents and Grunkle Stan in from Gravity Falls, and Hank drove down from Oregon State. It was a little cramped and Hank and Mom and Dad were all on air mattresses because Grunkle Stan couldn’t sleep on the floor or couch at his age but Acacia didn’t think any of them cared because it felt so _right_ to have everyone in one house again.

Acacia was content to bask in having everyone around their table, half listening as Willow rattled off an itinerary for the weekend.

“Tonight is Our Night In, and tomorrow is Halloween, so Mom, Dad, Uncles, we were thinking about taking you to the football game, though we are going to have to sneak Acacia in because she is persona non grata. Then Grunkle Stan and us will dress up to scare the kids that come to the door, and then Sunday is our birthday of course-“

Next to her, Hank was talking to their mother in a hushed voice, a bright blush across his skin. So he was finally telling Mom about that girl he liked? Good. Grunkle Stan and Reina were deep in discussion as well, talking about how well the Ducks baseball team was going to do this year.  Uncle Dipper was taking advantage of this period of corporeality to literally pour a five pound bag of sugar in his mouth and her Dad-

“Dad, why are you looking out the window?” Acacia asked unobtrusively, not wanting to interrupt the other conversations at the table.

Her dad looked back at her. “What? Oh, nothing, I just thought I saw a deer out there.”

Acacia thought her dad seemed kind of off but decided to let it drop. There were more important things to attend to, like potentially flinging a spoonful of potatoes at Grunkle Stan (it was their house, so if Acacia wanted to start a minor food fight then she was within her right to do so).

Slowly but surely Acacia loaded up her spoon.

—-

On their air mattress that night, Mabel poked Henry.

“Henry. Henry. Henry are you sleeping?”

Henry, already hanging off the bed, turned to face his wife. “I was.”

Mabel continued to poke Henry. “What did you see at dinner that bothered you?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you nothing me Henry Pines, I _know_ better.”

At that Henry couldn’t help but smile a bit. Mabel did, didn’t she?

“I thought I saw someone lurking outside.”

“ _What_.” Mabel’s voice dripped with ice.

“But it was weird. They weren’t our usual type of creepy lurkers. No robes, just…business suits.”

They couldn’t make each other out well in the dim of the night but Henry knew Mabel had a look that said “wat the fuq” on her face.

“I think they saw me staring,” Henry went on, “because they high tailed it out of there soon after.”

Mabel rolled over until she was the little spoon to Henry’s freakishly tall spoon.

“Never come across well-dressed cultists before,” Mabel murmured. “Usually they’re all doing the robe thing.”

“Maybe one of them finally changed it up?” Henry asked feebly.

Mabel wriggled under his arm. “Doesn’t explain what they’re doing outside of our _daughters’ house._ ”

At the last two words her voice had gone ice cold again and Henry couldn’t say that he blamed her, feeling as he did a tingle on the sides of his skull, a weight of things dangling and no, _no_.

“Good thing I brought my bat and crossbow in the trunk,” Mabel exclaimed.

“Crossbow?”                                     

Mabel furrowed her brow. “Henry, remember three birthdays ago, that was my present from Grunkle Stan?”

“Oh yeah.”

(Henry still had days where he had to pinch himself because he had a family where getting a cross bow as a birthday present was completely unremarkable)

“Well, now we know to be on the lookout,” Mabel said, wiggling into Henry’s embrace. “I’ll tell Dipping sauce in the morning too.”

Soon they had both fallen back asleep, but all that night Henry dreamt of keeping a watch on the woods outside of his daughter’s house, with eyes that were his but not quite, and hands swinging in the breeze.

—-

Halloween went rather well. Henry had woken up and made breakfast for everyone in the house, and then they went to the football game, which involved such delightful shenanigans as sneaking Acacia past security (with the help of a black wig and sunglasses). They still got kicked out after security noticed Stan taking some swigs from the flask he had on him, the note from ‘Dr. Medicine’ that Stan totally didn’t write before game time failing to convince them.

(“I’m at death’s door assholes!” Stan yelled at the guards as they were escorted out and even though that reminder made part of the rest of them quail inside, it was so…so…so _Stan_ that Mabel and Dipper couldn’t help but break out into a gigglefit.)

 Since they had a day to kill, Mabel and Henry took the girls grocery shopping (Henry remembered being in college and knew what his daughters would appreciate), had a nice steak dinner (Dipper, who didn’t even need a deal now to be corporeal for dinner, got his steak as rare as they would make it for him), and were now at home getting ready for Halloween.

Reina was currently wrapping Grunkle Stan up in bandages as he gesticulated wildly from his wheelchair (a recent acquisition).

“Ray honey it will be great! I look like a store bought mummy, we have the candy bucket on my lap, they take some candy, I grab their shoulders, they piss their pants…it will be brilliant!”

“Sure Grunkle Stan,” Reina said absently, not having the heart to tell him that she didn’t think they’d get many trick or treaters, being as far out as they were.

Dipper meanwhile was arguing with Mabel. Reina could hear Dipper (still corporeal from dinner) say “What do you mean I can’t take all the Twix out?”

“Dipper you can’t goody pick the candy we give out!”

“Why not again?”

“Because you want only the candy _I_ was going to goody pick-get your own candy Dipdops!”

Acacia came out into the living room, dressed in her sweatpants and an oversized shirt they had gotten during Freshman Orientation, her hair pulled back in a headband.

She grabbed her brass knuckles from the table by the door and put them in her pockets. “I’m going for a quick jog,” Acacia announced to the room. “I’ll be back in twenty.” She looked at her Dad and Willow, who were busy wrapping Hank up in ace bandages as well (he and Stan both independently decided to be mummies this year and neither of them refused to budge.)

“Will we be ready to hand out candy when I get back?” Acacia asked.

“Yes dear, now go jog before the sun goes down,” Reina replied, making shooing motions with her hands.

Acacia grinned and went out the house, leaving her family behind in the warm.

Outside, from the branches of a tree, a man in unobtrusive clothing clicked on a walkie talkie and spoke into it.

“It’s go time.”

—-

The three of them had somehow managed to find a house that was adjacent to Mount Pisgah Arboretum, as close to living in a forest as they could get without being unmanageably far from the University of Oregon.

It also meant that there were one million trails that crossed over in and around by their house, so Acacia went out jogging on the shortest one.

She passed a guy that looked to be a year or two older than her, jogging in the other direction, as she started. Acacia gave him a little head nod and then kept on going.

Two minutes later and another man, this one in his thirties with jet black hair, lapping her.

Hmm. She was usually the only one on the trail at this time of day, but eh, people could be shaking it up.

Five minutes and another young guy, blond hair in a ponytail, and all of Acacia’s instincts were ringing massive alarm bells.

She turned to start home and found that a group of about fifteen men of varying ages had gathered behind her (stupid, stupid, _stupid_ to have not heard them). Some were in camo, some in jogging gear (the better to blend in _damn it_ ) and others were in suits.

One against fifteen. This was probably not going to end well.

She slipped her hands into her pockets, and slipped her knuckles on. Acacia pulled her hands out, and with a tiny bit of blood from a scab on her thumb, activated the enchantment Uncle Dipper and Willow had placed on them when they had turned eighteen.

Blue fire burst from the metal ringing her fingers.

They wanted her? They’d have to fight.

——

Reina looked at the clock. Acacia should have been home by now.

She should have been home twenty minutes ago.

And she wasn’t answering Reina’s calls. And Acacia, always, _always_ answered, even if it was just to say “Canttalkgottagobye!” followed by the brief sounds of screaming or minor explosions before she hung up.

Reina could tell everyone else was worried too. Mabel had unobtrusively gotten the crossbow out, Stan was constantly cracking his knuckles and Henry was just….still. Very still.

Meanwhile, Dipper was grinding his hands in his eyes, trying to concentrate, trying to find his niece but-

(Every year, for Halloween and the triplet’s birthday the next day, Dipper had always stayed at the Shack or wherever they were, to celebrate both with his family. The flip side of that was that it took enormous concentration on his part to do so since Halloween was the one day of the year where everyone and their grandma decided they wanted to summon a demon. The effort of blocking out and ignoring those summons made it hard for Dipper to concentrate at times, obstructing even his bond with the kids.)

-he couldn’t do it.

A tap on Dipper’s shoulder, and Hank and Willow were flanking him.

“Would it help if we’re near you?” Willow asked, face pale.

In a less serious situation, he would have smiled at his wonderful, smart niblings.

As it was, he just nodded and grabbed one of their hands each.

Breathe in-

and feel the bright souls of his niblings, his Antares, his Sirius, the bond so like his and Mabel’s, trace where it is through the crowd of a hundred thousand calls and voices through his head, and it is still so fucking _hard_ but he pushes through because he can feel in his gut that his Polaris is in danger, _his_ Pole Star, _h̕i͞s̢-_

-breathe out, open eyes he didn’t know were closed.

Henry and Mabel were there, looking worriedly at him.

“She’s in the forest somewhere-I think I can get us pretty close to her, but we’re still going to have to look to find her.”

Mabel let out a breath, and went to go get some arrows for her crossbow. Henry turned to Hank, Willow, and Reina and said, “You three stay here with Stan, in case Acacia comes back.”

Reina opened her mouth to argue; there was no fucking way in Hell that she’d stay _behind_ while her girlfriend, the love of her life was in danger, but then she looked at Acacia’s dad in the eye and-

Before tonight, if someone asked her who the scary one was, Reina would have said Dipper first, because, duh, demon. Mabel came in at a very close second: Acacia had told her stories about her mom’s demon hunting exploits, and there was all the boxing she did, and that time in middle school a slime beast almost destroyed the town and Mabel had taken it down with a handful of salt, a baseball bat, and a boombox.

But then Henry looked at Reina, all freckles and angles and curly red hair like Hank-he _looked_ at her and Reina decided that she could hold tight here after all, even if it would kill her to do so.

Reina nodded tightly, tears in her eyes, at Acacia’s dad.

Henry reached around all three of them and gave all his kids a massive, bone breaking hug.

Out of the corner of her eye, in Henry’s shadow, Reina could have sworn she saw the spiraling branches of antlers.

——

Acacia groggily came to consciousness. She went down, like she knew she would. But she had the satisfaction at least of knowing half the fuckers that had come after her were going to be permanently maimed for life.

She took stock of her surroundings, like Mom had taught her.

Currently she was tied to a tree with rope and zip ties and handcuffs on her hands and overkill much? She looked around unobtrusively at her surroundings, with half lidded eyes. There were a worrying amount of people here-about forty to fifty, mostly men, but a few women scattered about, of varying ages and ethnicities.

She didn’t think they were cultists though. She had never met a cultist who wore a business suit or who, to a person, was packing heat.

Seriously, what the hell was happening here?

One man, older, in his fifties or sixties, peeled away from a group of besuited men who were all gathered around a golf cart talking and looking at a map, and walked over to her.

Acacia let her head loll to the side, but the grey haired man simply said, “Drop the act Miss Pines, I know you are awake.”

She opened her eyes and glared at him. “Dude, like, what the fuck?”

(not her most eloquent, but hey, she was good at painting and punching, and left the talking to Hank.)

The man in front of her simply tsked. “Language, Miss Pines.”

“You sent fifteen of your goons to capture me and I’m tied to a tree; language is the least of my concerns now. But seriously, are you guys a cult? A really well dressed cult? I mean, plus ten for dressing but-“

The man in front of her began to laugh, and took a handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe his eyes.

“A cult? Oh dear, that is good, we have never gotten that before.”

He looked at Acacia again. “You really have no idea who we are, and you’re related to Stan Pines?”

Acacia was trying her hardest not to convey any other emotion but anger, but she couldn’t help but start and go “Grunkle Stan? You know Grunkle Stan? What the fuck?”

The man winced at the ‘fuck’, and shook his head sadly. “So Stan has never said a thing has he?”

“Uh-“

“Never told you the real reason why he was in jail in Columbia-“

“Wait he was _what-“_

“Never told you about him and his brother-“

“Wait, seriously, wait, hold on, what the fuck-“

The older gentleman and Acacia looked at each other for a moment.  

He tucked his handkerchief back into his breast pocket. “Well, I would to educate you my dear but telling you all of what your uncle has done would take several hours, and I have a dinner date in Portland at ten tonight so I need to make this relatively quick.”

Only then did Acacia notice the group of henchmen (for surely that was who they were to this guy, whoever the fuck he was and if she got out of this so help her God Grunkle Stan had some explaining to do) closing in on them.

One of them had a tray with pliers, a corkscrew, thin metal wire.

A knife.

Acacia wasn’t (too) proud; she had been terrified from the second she got jumped by fifteen men jogging.

But looking at that tray, her fear ratcheted up to another level. She felt sweat break out across her brow, her breath start to hitch and halt, her heart race, a tear begin to creep in the corner of her eye-

No. No, she could do this. She was Acacia Ruth Polaris Pines, and she would not let this….this crazy asshole in front of her and his creeper hanger-ons defeat her.

All she had to do was hold on until Uncle Dipper came, Acacia reminded herself. Endure, outlast, survive.

Okay, she could do this.

Though speaking of Uncle Dipper, she couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow at the silver haired gentleman in front of her.

“Um, I just want to throw this out there, you know my Mom hunts demons right? Like, are you sure you want to take that risk?”

He laughed. “Already taken care of Miss Pines. We crushed your phone and threw the sim card into the brook, and the rest of my associates are spread throughout these woods to prevent any interruptions. I am terribly sorry dear, but there is truly no one coming to save you.”

Acacia knew she couldn’t stall too much longer but, if, god forbid, she was going to die (no, _no_ she was _not_ going to die, she was going to _live_ and take every one of these fuckers _down_ ), she wanted to at least know-

“Why?” she asked, and the gentleman cocked an eyebrow at her. “If you’re going to, judging by that tray over there, torture me to death, at least tell me who you are and why?”

He paused, and Acacia went on. “Come on dude, throw me a fucking bone, you said yourself you got these woods on lockdown-I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to kill me. Consider it a final request.”

The older gentleman went to the besuited woman holding the tray and picked up the silver knife, before returning to Acacia.

“My name is Mr. Edwards. Seventy years ago-“

“SEVENTY?!” Acacia couldn’t help but squawk.

“Your uncle and grandparents took away someone very dear to me. Though I was small, I swore that one day they would feel the same pain.”

He hefted the knife and Acacia felt like she was going to throw up.

“And now I have the opportunity. I am so sorry, but this probably will hurt quite a lot.”

——

Since Dipper only had a vague clue of where in the forest Acacia was, they decided it was best for the three of them to split up, searching a rough triangle of the area where Acacia may be.

Dipper blipped each of them to a corner of the informal triangle and each alone, all three of them began to look.

-

Unknowingly, Dipper had switched to his more demonic form, leaving waves of fear and shadow in his wake as he stalked the forest.

This wouldn’t be happening if he wasn’t so weak (his inner Mabel protested at that, told him he was being a doofus, but Dipper ignored his sister for once because he knew the truth).

Dipper was the Dreambender, the Lord of Blood, the Twin Star, the Reality Shaker, and a million other laughable names that he had accumulated over the years, he shouldn’t be taken down by the effort of staying solid and ignoring the summons of thousands of people on this one night.

(Inner Mabel pointed out he was still only in his forties, and also this wasn’t just any night, but Halloween, the time when the barriers between the Mindscape and this world were at their weakest. Inner Mabel was picking a really inconvenient time to be sensible about the whole thing.)

Dipper couldn’t be sensible, not now when his Pole Star was in danger, and all the power at his disposal didn’t seem to be able to do a fucking thing.

(Behind him, one of Edwards’ men fell out of a tree, clutching at his chest, unable to breathe, paralyzed by the rage roiling off the man in the top hat who had just gone by)

-

Mabel padded silently in the woods, crossbow at the ready.

Mabel and Dipper had taught the kids everything they could ever need to know about magic, about demons, about what to do in every conceivable situation the twins could think of that the triplets would need to get out of.

Mabel and Stan had taught them how to fight, first the basics of self-defense, then boxing for Acacia, and stick fighting for Hank. (Dipper took care of Willow’s lessons, as they involved magic usually).

Henry (it was all Henry on this one, Mabel was smart, but in different ways than her husband) had taught them how to think critically, how to look at a situation and assess the best way to get out of it or turn it to their advantage.

Logically, Mabel knew the four of them had given the kids everything they needed to survive almost any bad spot they found themselves in.

But this was her daughter, her oldest, her baby. All Mabel could think about as she darted through the trees was the first time Acacia spoke, the first time she walked, the first tree she climbed.

Mabel thought about Acacia’s firsts, and hoped that she wasn’t about to come upon her daughter’s last.

-

Henry walked ten feet from where Dipper had blipped him and stepped out two trees from where Acacia was tied up.

Henry arrived just in time to see an older man in a suit stab out his daughter’s right eye.

—-

Mabel heard the scream-oh god, oh god, oh _god Acacia-_ and ran towards it, willing her daughter to hold on until one of them got there.

—

Dipper felt a stabbing pain in his right eye and _ṋ͖̖̫̟̣ͅo̤̭͓͉̞̩͙_ and blipped to where his niece was.

Dipper didn’t see anything else but Acacia, waves of thick, horrid pain that no child of his ever should feel rolling off her. He didn’t even make threats or see who did this. That could wait.

All that mattered now was saving his niece.

Absently, he noticed a tug on his soul, his power, and that no one was hindering him from going to Acacia and untying her, melting away those cursed handcuffs, letting her collapse into his arms.

That was surely a problem that could be dealt with once he got Acacia stabilized and out of pain.

——-

Five years ago, Henry’s brother in law lent him a small portion of his power, to save the life of his youngest daughter.

But Dipper, even at 42, was still learning such paltry things as “fine control” and “not completely overdoing it” and thus the Woodsman was born.

Henry had a link to Dipper now, to a part of Dipper. He had only had to pull on that a few times in the years since they found Willow being drowned in a kiddie pool.

But each of those times, Henry had felt in control, had never felt that burning that he had that first, terrifying time.

Acacia’s screams rang in his ears, bloodcurdling, awful, horrid screams that spoke of pain beyond human endurance.

Henry _pulled_.

A small piece of flesh hit the ground, and the elderly gentleman, who hadn’t seen Henry yet, stepped on it.

Henry _burned_ and drew from Dipper more power than he ever had before. He welcomed the burning, even as it burned away everything that made him _him_ because this man was killing his daughter, these people around him were aiding him, and nothing mattered any more but making sure they all paid.

Distantly he registered that his body was twisting in ways that human bodies weren’t meant to, distant notions of pain, but none of that mattered, when his daughter was there in front of him, suffering. The only thing that mattered was saving Acacia-nothing else, not even him.

His last conscious thought before the darkness swallowed him whole was to hope that he wasn’t too late.

——

One minute, Hazel was watching Mr. Edwards take the eye out of his target and holding the tray ready for when he was wanting to move on to the next part of his plan, and the next everything had gone to hell.

 

She saw a tall, red headed man step out of the trees (seemingly out of nowhere; how had he gotten past everyone else?) who looked a bit like the Pines girl they had tied up to the tree.

The redheaded man looked at the Pines girl, and suddenly reality twisted for a second, and Hazel blacked out like she was twenty and wet behind the ears again, all elbows and knees, rather than the professional wife, mother, and assasin that she was now.

It was only a brief moment, more a dizzy spell, and Hazel came to quickly (professional after all).

She looked at the red headed man and oh.

Oh god.

Oh fuck.

Hazel looked at where the red headed man was and saw a creature that was straight out of her nightmares.

The red headed man had already been tall, close to seven feet if Hazel’s eye read him right, but somehow he had grown taller, pushing nine feet now. The remains of his clothes hung around him in tatters, revealing flesh that had turned as dark as the night around them, pitch black. Crawling up his legs, wrapping around his torso, piercing his skin like a sewing needle with thread, were branches of wood. They punched out of his back like spikes, the blood still glistening where they had gone through his skin. In one hand was an axe, but it was impossible to tell the handle and his arm and hand apart, the axe as much a part of him as any of his other limbs.

He didn’t have hair anymore; in its place and spiraling all around him was green and blue fire, licking the air and leaving him unburnt. Antlers, massive antlers made of wood and bone, spiraled out of his head, climbing into the air around him. Bloody hands hung from them, fingers still twitching as if there was still some life within them. The man didn’t have eyes any more but just two black pits where eyes used to be.

Those two pits were staring straight at her, at the tray in her hands.

Staring at her hands.

Looking at the hands that hung off of the monster’s antlers, Hazel Canton decided that Mr. Edwards was paying her nowhere near enough money to deal with a monster. She dropped the tray unceremoniously and began to run.

(A little part of her knew though, that she wasn’t making it out of this forest alive.)

—-

The Woodsman surveyed the scene around him.

The brightly burning one had come at the cry of his sapling and the Woodsman knew he could trust the star (and such a bright star he was; how did that tiny flesh body of his contain all of that fire?) to take care of his sapling. He felt coming closer and closer the evergreen that was as dear to him as his saplings, the star on the side of him, the axe in his hand.

A cry came out from his sapling, and the fire that was fueling him inside flared up, burning even brighter than it had before.

(that fire was his other self, the source of who he was, and it was burning itself away, doing all it could to keep the Woodsman here, to avenge his child)

How dare these lesser beings hurt his bud-

(my daughter, my Acacia)

-his sapling?

The Woodsman hefted his axe.

Every last thing in front of him that had dared to touch his sapling would die.

—-

Mabel ran into the small clearing, almost ignoring the mass amount of men and women in suits that were running away past her, running from where she was headed.

Out of the corner of her eye a flash of green and blue fire, an antler, an axe, followed.

Oh god, _Henry_.

She took a deep breath, and steeled herself as she went to see her daughter. Mabel had to trust that her husband could take care of himself, and not get in too deep.

Mabel broke free of the tree line, ignoring the blood curdling screams erupting from the woods around her, and went straight to where Dipper and Acacia were.

She collapsed to the ground next to her twin and her daughter.

Dipper knew without even asking what Mabel would want, and gently transferred Acacia from his lap to Mabel’s. Her daughter dwarfed her, but Mabel didn’t even care.

“Oh…Oh _Dipper_ ,” Mabel trembled, a shaking hand brushing the hair gently back from Acacia’s face.

Her right eye…was gone. Dipper had done the best he could, staunching the bleeding, cleaning out anything that could possibly infect the wound, and taking all of her pain into himself.

(his demonic side had protested at that, what kind of deal was that? Dipper ignored that voice, overwhelmed by the sensation he had taken within him, relieved that Acacia was able to rest at last)

Mabel needed to be strong for her daughter, to get her out of this situation, but she couldn’t help but start to cry, silent tears coursing down her cheeks.

Acacia stirred a bit as one of Mabel’s tears fell on her face, and Dipper placed a hand on Mabel’s shoulder.

She looked at him, burning hate in her eyes.

“Who. Did. This?”

Dipper put a hand behind his head, the gesture completely at odds with the situation they were in.

“Um,” he began, and Mabel used her free hand to twist his bow tie and pull him closer to her.

“Dipper Pines, you tell me who did this _NOW.”_

“I don’t know…um….Henry took care of the guy who did this to Acacia before I had a chance to do or say anything, and then he kind of took off after everyone else.”

Mabel looked over to the side for a second.

Mabel Pines had an iron stomach, and twenty five years of demon hunting under her belt, but what she saw made her blanch, and look quickly away.

“Henry….Henry did that?”

Dipper nodded, as pale as she was.

“Mabel, I’m worried about him.”

Another scream ripped out of the forest, but the twins easily ignored it.

“He’s burning himself out. Henry took way more of my power in him than his body can handle.”

“Well take it back Dip.”

“I can’t!”

As worried and furious and sick with terror as Mabel was, she still somehow managed to summon a look of complete incredulousness to shoot at her brother.

Dipper ran his bloody hands through his hair in frustration. “The one thing humans have on demons is will. And right now, Henry’s will to protect Acacia, to make sure everyone who had a hand in this is dead, is far, far stronger than anything I can muster.”

Mabel knew, abstractly, this about her husband, but she was still completely shocked.

“You said burning himself out-“

Dipper looked up from checking on Acacia, still deep asleep in Mabel’s arms, and into his sister’s eyes.

“Mabel, he….I can feel him, I can feel his _soul_ burning and I’m trying to pull him back and…and I _can’t-_ “

Golden fire tracked down Dipper’s face.

She passed Acacia back over to her brother, and stood up.

“Well, if will power is really that big of a deal…”

She shot a grin at Dipper, unsteady and wavering, but a grin nonetheless, and started off.

“I think I stand a shot.”

——

The Woodsman was beginning to get a little tired, but still he made himself hunt down every last person that had drawn sap from his seedling.

Some of them had tried to leave the forest, only to find thick branches growing, tangling, making a barrier to keep them in.

Some had tried to fight back, shooting small metal pellets at him, and seemed very surprised to see that they just were absorbed by the thick tendrils of wood that snaked around his body.

Some begged for mercy-but what was mercy to him? They had no problem cutting down his child, his sapling.

The fire that fueled him may have shown some mercy, but the Woodsman never did.

He swung his axe down and a round fleshy part went rolling off, eyes still open to the sky. The Woodsman turned, feeling how many more bodies he would need to cull before he gave in to the dark that was starting to beckon around the corners of his vision when he felt another fire, brighter than his ever was or ever would be, come in.

His evergreen.

“Henry! _Henry!_ ” the other part of him cried, and inside, the Woodsman felt the fire that was fueling him contract almost painfully, flickering low, before returning back to its steady, furious pace.

His other half ran to him and wrapped her limbs around him. The Woodsman gently stroked her hair with his axe free hand.

Water dripped from his evergreen on to the front part of him.

“Henry, Henry, please come back, _please_ , Dipper can take care of the rest of these guys and you’re-you’re….Henry you’re killing yourself please come back please.”

A sob ripped out of her throat, a sob that was too much like the one his sapling had cried for comfort.

No. The fire inside of him agreed with him. Even if it meant the end of both of them, it was worth it if those who had wounded their sapling were taken care of.

Slowly, the Woodsman disentangled himself from his beloved, his sun, his light, his evergreen. It hurt him, both of him, to do this, but it needed to be done.

Before his evergreen could do or say anything else, the Woodsman had left, lost further into the woods and into the darkness.

—-          

Acacia stirred in Dipper’s arms.

She opened her eyes.

Or rather, she tried to open both of them and could only manage one and if Dipper’s heart hadn’t already been broken to a million pieces, it was now.

“Uncle Dip….where’s Daddy?” Acacia asked weakly.

Oh god that was the _last_ thing he wanted to answer right now.

She noticed his silence. “Uncle Dipper….I want…I really want-“

Acacia began to cry, blood streaked tears crawling down her face.

“I just want my dad!” she managed to breathe out through the pain.

Dipper could do nothing, say nothing, but just cradle his nibling closer to him, and continue to take away the pain.

She let out an anguished “ _Daddy_ ” and in the background, the screaming stopped.

—-

“ _Daddy_ ”

The Woodsman froze, axe in midair to take down the flesh in front of him (he could see the sin on his hands, see that this was the man his other self had seen out a window not too long ago)

That voice.

That was his sapling.

His sapling needed him.

He began to lope across the forest, occasionally dropping to all fours to go faster.

“Daddy, Daddy where are you? I’m scared.”

The fire in the Woodsman that had burned so brightly and heedlessly paused at that.

Across the woods, the Woodsman could hear his seedling begin to cry.

His sapling didn’t need the Woodsman.

She needed her father.

He came to the clearing and there she was, wounded in body, but not, as he was glad to see, much in the soul.

Acacia lifted her head as best as she could from Dipper’s lap.

“Daddy?”

The Woodsman let go of the power that had brought wood to his skin, his antlers to the surface. The fire of his other self came to the fore, no longer needed for fuel.

Henry felt himself dwindling, parts of him disappearing and fading back to where they had come.

He had done a lot of terrible, awful things tonight. There was a reckoning that he owed for that.

But for now, all that mattered was the red headed girl in front of him, in his brother’s lap.

He ran up to her, and gathered her up into his arms.

“Acacia.”

—-

The first thing Acacia saw the next morning, besides the sterile environment of the hospital room around her, was Reina, who had obviously spent the whole night crying and not sleeping.

Blearily, hopped up on fifteen different pain medications and no longer having depth perception, she eventually managed to grab her girlfriend’s hand.

“Reina. My love. Life is short. I love you. Let’s get married?”

“Can we wait until we’re done with undergrad? Weddings are expensive.”

“Yeah, it cool baby.”

Then they kissed as best as they could under the circumstances. Later talking about it, both would agree it was probably not the most romantic of proposals, but as Reina told Acacia, she never doubted the weight of feeling behind it.

She turned her head as best as she could and saw Willow and Hank. Acacia smiled, and made their secret hand sign, which they returned. They would talk later; Acacia had business to attend to.

Namely, her uncles and father, who were all looking equally guilty and downtrodden.

She pointed at Uncle Dipper and her mom. “Mom, Uncle Dipper, can you blip to the Shack and get every eye patch you can, and my bedazzler?”

They both nodded. Her Mom bent over and gave her a kiss on the forehead, and a gentle hug, before blipping off with Dipper.

Looking at Grunkle Stan, Acacia pointed at him. “You have a fucking lot of explaining to do. Like, sweet moses Grunkle Stan, holy fuck, like shit-“

(She was rambling but eh, pain medication, it was groovy).

And there was her dad, looking guilty and awful for some reason.

She motioned until he got the hint and grabbed her hand.

He leaned in. “Acacia, I…I failed you. I am so sor-“

“No Daddy. You saved me.”

Her dad didn’t let go of her hand, even as Grunkle Stan began his tale.


	7. Chapter 7

Random Facts and Headcanons Wheeee!

1\. Henry thought this was going to be a one time thing. The amount of wrong he was kind of boggled his mind looking back on it ten years later.

2\. It was a little weird to realize that pretty much anyone with the Sight could see his antlers. See them, and apparently feel the need to stare at them for minutes on end. Henry learned to ignore the looks after a while but it was still odd to him.

3\. His wife, his dearest, the love of his life, made sure to tell him that he had a ‘nice rack’ three to five times a week for the rest of his life. (There was also the sweater she knitted for him that said “My rack is bigger than yours” and that Henry could barely wear outside of the house without wanting to die of embarrassment).

4\. Some days Henry felt deeply that bond between him and Dipper, that power that was there, always available for the taking. The weight of hands and horn off of his head. The heft of his axe and how terribly good it felt to solve all of his problems with one fell swoop. The knowledge that he could start swinging and burning, and not even Dipper could stop him from doing what he wanted….

Henry usually went out and fished by himself on those days.

5\. Once they had figured out that they could eat the apples that grew off his antlers without hurting him, Mabel had gotten the idea to take the seeds from one and plant it in the yard. To their amazement, it actually grew and with some help with Dipper, in about a year or two they had an apple tree in their yard.

The Pines recipe for apple pie is called “Soul Pie”. For the best Soul Pies, one should use the apples from Papa Pines’ tree at the Shack.

6\. Henry thought that maybe the Woodsman wouldn’t be needed to save his grandchildren, that they would be fine.

He was wrong.

7\. When the kids were sixteen, Mabel had talked Henry into using his antlers as a menorah, “only for pictures, I promise”. After they had made the deal with Dipper and the candles had been stuck on, the sound that came out of Mabel’s mouth was not human, and Henry knew, just knew, that this was going to happen again next year.

8\. Henry should have made it to around 119 like his wife, and not the 86 he was when he actually passed away.

But then again, there was a price to pay to burn so brightly.

9\. Not only did he apparently attract dryads now, but apparently hamadryads, elves, and kodamas loved them as well.

Also weredeer.

This was also how Henry Pines found out there was such a thing as weredeer.

10\. There were scars on his back from where wood had punched through skin and emerged as spikes, scars on his arms where the wood of an axe handle had sprouted and dug into his skin, scars on his scalp hidden by his hair where bone had erupted from his skull.

Dipper cried over them, silently, golden tears dripping onto Henry’s skin.

(The first time Mabel saw them, she said “thank you” and buried her face in his shirt)

11\. Henry was already used to being used as a laundry rack by his dear wife and daughters, waking up to find a bra or two dangling from above him after a nap.

Then Willow began taking in foster children-his ever increasing number of grandchildren-and Henry got used to waking up and finding fifteen bras hanging from his antlers.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the aftermath of the Slaughter in Eugene

"HEY DAD!"

Henry almost jumped out of his skin. Acacia, home for Spring Break, had snuck up from the kitchen and behind the couch and was now leaning over the side and laughing.

"Sorry Dad I couldn’t help but see you and I had to take the opportunity."

She tapped her eye patch (today neon green and pink plaid) and grinned.

Henry, who had been chuckling, had stopped, gone pale.

It had been four months since…..since it had happened and Acacia had been maimed, and he had …well, he didn’t like to think about what he had done.

(He got full color replays in his dreams once to twice a week anyway.)

Everyone else seemed to have adjusted accept him; even Mabel, who still occasionally sobbed into his shirt at night when they were in bed, had managed to put on a happy face.

She had also managed the art of not only crocheting eye patches, but eye patches with bobbly bits which had thrilled Acacia to no end.

Stan was quieter than he used to be, but Henry had seen him one day in his office with an old black leather bound book, and a phone in his hand. The old man had perked up after that, and coincidentally in the news there was reports out of Seattle, Omaha, and El Paso of massive crime rings being broken up and busted.

Willow and Hank both had moved past the “treat Acacia like spun glass” stage and now teased her mercilessly. Acacia not only gave it back as good as she got, but she had started collecting eye related puns, much to the annoyance of her fiancée.

Even Dipper seemed to be handling it better than Henry. Henry thought, as awful as it was to admit it, that it helped that what happened to Acacia was because of something from Stan’s past as opposed to Dipper and Mabel’s side of things.

It just seemed to be only him who couldn’t handle it.

Acacia wasn’t as good at reading people as Hank and Willow were, but she wasn’t stupid. She flipped herself over the couch back and landed next to him. She poked Henry in the arm.

"Dad, spill, you look like someone put all the books on a shelf back in the wrong order."

Henry said nothing, just looked down at his hands.

Hands that seemed to be good for nothing but hurting, hands that had killed, hands that-

Acacia loomed suddenly in his vision as she had stuck her head into his line of eyesight.

"Dad. Dad. Daaaaaaad."

Henry sighed.

"It’s my fault," he finally managed to get out.

Acacia snorted. “Daddy, its that fucker that carved out my eye’s fault, not yours.”

"I should have-"

"Magically known what was going to happen when I went jogging?"

Henry couldn’t help but snort and Acacia grinned.

"That’s my dad! Cookies all around!"

She papped him on the head. “Pap pap.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re still not too old for me to take you down a peg daughter mine.”

"Hah!"

They sat in silence for a minute and then-

"My life isn’t ruined Dad."

Henry looked up at her, eyes haunted and dark.

"Dad, I can still see! I’m alive! I’m engaged! I’m kicking so much butt at school. I’m okay."

Acacia ran a hand through her hair.

"Also, it’s bad enough Uncle Dipper pouts and acts like an angst machine, I don’t need my dad doing the same."

Henry laughed. “Promise you’re fine?”

"I have a few nightmares but, eh, it’s okay."

Henry reached over and hugged his daughter until she squeaked.

He still wasn’t okay. But as long as she was well…

That was all that mattered


	9. Chapter 9

It was both odd and nice to be the only adult in the house, Henry decided, watching his grandchildren play at his feet while he had the TV turned to PBS for an evening of cooking shows.

  
Odd, because he felt Stan’s absence like a great aching void. It had been almost a year now, but Henry still wasn’t over the loss of the old man in his life (and neither were Dipper and Mabel, he knew). He had been like a second father to Mabel and Dipper…and to himself, if Henry was being honest. It was still odd to be sitting in this recliner instead of Stan, to not have to maneuver around Stan’s wheelchair, to-

  
Henry shook himself quickly. Stan wouldn’t want him becoming maudlin, and in fact probably would have laughed at Henry and made some cutting remarks if he could see the mood Henry was getting himself into. 

  
Focus on the nice.

  
Mainly, as much as he loved his wife and daughter and brother-in-law, it was nice to have an evening where he had the grandkids all to himself, and complete control of the television. Later tonight Mabel would come home from her night out with Candy and Grenda and Paz, Willow would return from her visit to Bend to see Acacia, and Dipper would come back from whatever demon things he was doing, but for now, it was just him and his grandchildren.

  
Auriga was on the floor playing with her Lincoln Logs with Martine, his newest grandchild who was only a year older than Riga. Rob was with them as well, though his structures were slightly more complex than his younger sisters. His twin Annie was currently tucked against him, reading a book and snorting at every other page. (Henry called Annie his “little old lady” and Willow couldn’t exactly deny it.)

  
With Annie’s warm little body against him (and didn’t he feel chuffed that she trusted him enough now to sit with him?), Henry felt his eyes begin to drift shut. The kids would be fine and he was sure someone would be home soon….

  
Suddenly, the power cut off, and he was joined on the recliner by both Rob and Martine, making Annie huff in indignation.

  
“Rob, you’re ten, stop being afraid of the dark,” Annie scoffed at her twin.

  
“Annie,” Henry gently chided. “Be nice.”

  
It was dark so Henry couldn’t quite see, but he just knew that his oldest granddaughter was rolling her eyes at him, confirmed by Annie going ”Pop-Pop…”

  
Truly she was ten going on seventeen. Henry decided to take a different tact with her.

  
“Sweetheart, can you watch your siblings while I go look at the breaker?” he asked Annie, and felt her nod against him. Henry disentangled himself from his three grandchildren, and then remembered that Riga was still on the floor.

  
“Auriga darling, are you okay?”

  
Auriga snorted. “I can see everyone’s colors. I cool.” 

  
“Martine, will you be okay too?”

  
“Yes sir, Mr. Pi-Pop Pop,” she shyly said. (Martine was still getting use to calling him Pop-Pop and Mabel Gam-Gam.) 

  
“I’ll be right back,” Henry assured the four of them (even though only two of them really needed assuring), and navigated by memory through the Library, out the back door, and to the breaker box on the side of the Shack, grabbing the flashlight that was on a hook by the door on his way out.

  
When he got to the breaker box, everything looked fine. There didn’t seem to be any reason for the power to be out. It could have been the weather, but it was September, and it had been clear and temperate out for the last few weeks, and well…..

  
Henry had a bad feeling about this. And he hadn’t made it to sixty and change as a member of the Pines family without following his instincts. He really regretted not taking Mabel’s bat outside with him.  Especially as some momentary investigation revealed cut wires and he had left the children inside alone.

  
The weight of the flashlight was heavy and reassuring in his hand, and Henry stilled himself, listening intently, waiting, waiting, wai-

  
Henry made three quick steps over to one of the rose bushes Mabel had planted last year, and thrust his hand in, disregarding the thorns scratching his skin. 

  
He hauled out the figure of a man and threw him to the ground. Before the man had a chance to react, Henry had turned his flashlight on and trained it on the man revealing-

  
Fuck.

  
From the ground, Martine’s birth father Carl winced at the sudden bright light.

  
Henry breathed through his nose once or twice, and tried his best to ignore the flame in him that was baying for blood, baying to take this…this thing’s hands all covered in blood and no, _no._

  
What Henry finally said was “What are you playing at Carl?” He decided to not mention facts such as “Last time I checked you were in the Deschutes County Prison” or “I’m pretty sure your sentence isn’t up for another ten years.” Deal with Carl now, ask questions later.

  
Carl spat at his feet and started to get to his feet. A boot to his chest prevented that, and Carl glared at Henry, hate dripping from his eyes.

  
“Where’s that little cunt? I know you’re hiding her here.”

  
Henry’s eyes narrowed and reminded the flame inside that he couldn’t punish Carl the way he so deserved because it had taken Willow the past two years to get certified to be a caretaker for children in the foster system and he wasn’t going to jeopardize that now.

  
“I would advise you not to speak of your daughter in that way,” Henry finally managed to grit out. 

  
“She’s my meal ticket, mine to do with as I please and I’m taking her back tonight,” Carl said.  
(Martine didn’t have the Sight, but attracted minor spirits to her like flies to honey, who would do what she asked. When Carl had been arrested, they had found Martine locked in a basement, half-starved and chained to the wall…)

  
Unbidden, Henry felt the air around his head stir, weight suddenly added to the sides of his head, and judging by the look on Carl’s face, he noticed as well. Carl looked like he was going to be sick for a minute before visibly rallying himself. He laughed. “So you’re a freak, just like my kid. So fucking what,” Carl taunted. “I brought some help with me; how do you think I got out here? Told him he could have what he liked as long as he left me my d-“

  
Screams erupted from within the Shack and Henry delivered a swift kick to Carl’s head, knocking him unconscious.

  
He reached inside himself for that flame that was always there, even in years past when he tried his best to ignore it or will it away before accepting that it was now and forever a part of him. Stoked the fire even as he worried that he was going to irrevocably scare Martine back into the shell that she had just started to come out of. His axe came to his hand as he felt the familiar twisting and stretching, wood punching in and out of his flesh, the flames erupting from his head, the ripping of muscle and skin, and his eyes sinking farther back into his skull than they had any business doing so.

  
Henry also felt an odd tearing sensation in his chest, but that was a worry for later.

  
He burst into the house (literally-the back door was going to have to be replaced if they survived this) and ran to the living room.

  
There was Annie, brandishing the backup bat that Mabel kept behind the couch. (Oh god, his Annie, his little old woman, she was so brave…)

  
There was Rob who had thrown his body over Auriga and Martine. And there….

  
Henry had, somehow, never come across a ghoul in his over forty years of marriage with Mabel. The descriptions he had read in books didn’t even compare to the sight in front of him.

  
The ghoul was taller than Henry, even in the form he was in now, and bent almost double thanks to the ceiling of the Shack. He could see every bone under the ghoul’s skin, probably could count each one if he were so inclined. Its skin was a sick, pale, pinkish grey, and was flaking off here and there, revealing rotten muscle underneath. The ghoul didn’t have claws…but that was because their tips of their finger bones had thrust through flesh, and had then been sharpened to a keep point. Its eye sockets were empty, sunken pits, the eyes having been so long ago plucked out that dust had started to collect within the two holes. Drool pooled in its mouth and dripped slowly yet irrevocably to the floor.

  
And above all, the smell of flesh beginning to rot, and avarice and hunger without end.

  
It began to move towards Annie, who despite her best efforts was completely terrified and Henry threw his axe at the ghoul’s head. It sunk in with a deep thunk, and the ghoul turned towards Henry.

  
Annie didn’t even have to be told, but grabbed Martine by the hand, with Rob getting Auriga, and the four of them ran out of the room and into the basement, just like they had practiced with Willow and Dipper and Mabel.

  
Henry held up his hand and the axe dislodged itself from the ghoul’s head and back into his hand (it was a part of him, a part of his soul, it would never leave him-). The ghoul turned towards him-thank God- and roared, shaking the Shack to its very foundation.

  
“Y o  u,” the ghoul croaked out, each letter falling out of its mouth in odd gaps, as if each syllable from its mouth left with only the greatest of efforts. “Yo u sm el l bet te r… mo r e… .pi qua nt.” The ghoul inhaled audibly through its nose and grinned, a rictus of decaying fangs and bits of flesh and blood from past meals. “H e   prom is e d me yo u ng   fle s h   b u t    yo u… . fla m e an d   ma g ic   a n d fury…. I am goi n g to t ak e my _t im e_ wit h y o u.”

  
Henry said nothing, and the ghoul looked discomfited, inasmuch as one could with a rotting face.  
“I p re fer s om e f ig ht in m y fo o d… . th e ta st e is sw e e ter… . . b ut I thi n k you w il l be g o od a nyw a y… . .”

  
The ghoul lunged at him, which was what he was waiting for. He willed the fire inside of him to burn as hot and fast as it could. Flames burning white in their intensity erupted along his axe as he hefted it above his head. The ghoul screamed in pleasure and as it got within arm’s length of Henry, he brought his axe down hard, the arc of it jamming the blade into the floorboards.  
There was a silence in the room, and then two thuds as each half of the now dead ghoul fell down on either side of Henry’s axe blade. 

  
The fire bayed for more blood, begged to chop the ghoul to bits and pieces, to make sure that the creature that had threatened his family never hurt them again, but that was Dipp-…that was just talk. Henry ignored that impulse coming from within himself, instead focusing on willing the wood crawling up his arm and ripping out of his back to go back in, willing antlers to go intangible once again, muscle and bone that propelled him even more upward than he usually was to return him to his usual height.  
  
Once he was certain he had returned to himself, he made his way to the vending machine that doubled as the basement door and opened it gently.  
  
"Kids, it's just me, I'm coming down," Henry called down the stairs before descending. When he got to the landing he immediately was tackled by all four of his grandchildren. Luckily he had expected that and managed to brace himself but he still fell gently backwards onto the bottom step, landing in a sitting position. Martine and Auriga wriggled on to his lap, Rob snaked around him to cuddle against his back, and Annie sat on the floor next to his feet, leaning into one of his legs.  
  
"You still got your antlers Pop-Pop," Annie pointed out.  
  
Fuck, as if he hadn't frightened Martine enough already....though she didn't seem to be frightened, instead looking at the dangling hands, the winding wood and bone curiously.  
  
"Are you all okay?" Henry asked, and got four nods.  He gave everyone a squeeze as best as he could. "I'm so proud of you four," he told them, "you all were so brave and did exactly what you needed to." He clucked Annie under the chin. "Especially you old lady."  
  
Annie couldn't help but grin despite herself. "Any time old man," she said.  
  
"Did my dad do that?" Martine asked quietly.  
  
Henry struggled for a second with how he was going to answer that because he wanted Martine to feel safe in her home. Finally, he decided to tell the truth (Mabel and him had been honest with their kids for the past forty years and he saw no reason to stop now).  
  
"Yes honey, he sent that."  
  
"But you took care of it?"  
  
Henry nodded. "I promise you no matter how hard he may try, how hard anyone may try, you will always be safe here. No one will ever take you away or hurt you here."  
  
(Out of the corner of his eye he caught Annie's eye, to make sure she knew that as well. Rob and Auriga were a little more trusting than she.)  
  
Martine snuggled more into his arms. "Mr. Di- Grunkle Dipper told me that when I first came here too.  
  
"He did, did he?"  
  
She nodded against him. "He said not to worry about monsters, because you could become a good monster, like him, and you two are what bad monsters are scared of."  
  
Henry was stunned into silence, and settled for cuddling with the four of them for another minute or two. Finally he gently got Auriga and Martine off of his lap, and tickled Rob until he giggled and let go. Henry stood up. "Kids, I need to take care of some things upstairs-will you four be okay staying down here until I'm done?"  
  
They looked at each other and nodded. Henry smiled at them and made his way back up the stairs, closing the door behind him. He grabbed some zip ties that Willow and Mabel kept in a kitchen drawer and went outside to bind a still unconscious Carl by his hands and feet. He resisted the urge to kick him a few more times and went back inside to the living room, where the ghoul's corpse was still on the floor.  
  
How on earth was he going to get rid of this thing? That a ghoul had made its way into the house could be used against Willow to revoke her license, and while he knew Officer Blubs-Durland would gladly cover for him, not even she could explain away a ghoul carcass.  
  
Almost without thought, Henry knelt down to the floor and reached up to touch the top of one of his antlers, which was still alit with a blue flame. His fingers trailed fire from the tip of his antler down to the corpse on the ground. He touched his left hand to the body of the ghoul and it immediately began to burn, eerily quiet and contained, until there was no trace of flesh or blood or even ash remaining.  
  
Henry got up with a creak and a pop of his back, and dusted his hands off. Now to get the kids from the basem-  
  
There was a wrenching tearing pain in his chest and Henry began to cough, huge gaping heaves that didn't even allow for him to breathe. He fell backwards onto the couch as he continued to hack and wheeze. He covered his mouth and felt something wet hit his hand.  
  
Finally, the fit passed, and Henry drug in deep breaths of air. He looked at his hands.  
  
They were covered in blood, blood and some kind of dark black oily substance.  
  
Henry stared at his hands and knew with a sudden bone deep surety that he was killing himself, that he would one day burn out. Not now, not next year, not even in the next five years. But he knew just like he knew his children's birthdays or who every chronic late returner at the library was, that he and Mabel were supposed to have gone together....and that would no longer happen.  
  
He knew this just like he knew that he would need the Woodsman again, even if that flame inside of him was killing him by degrees, burning so brightly that it was burning his life away.  
  
But Dipper couldn't always save the day, there were some things Willow couldn't burn her way out of, and despite what Mabel insisted, the grappling hook was not always the answer.  
  
And if it came to a choice between the lives of those he loved and his own, he knew what decision he would make every time.  
  
Sighing, he got up to wash his hands so he could call the police and bring the kids out of the basement.  
  
What on earth was he going to tell Mabel?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from this prompt
> 
> If no ones suggested it and if you're not saving it for later can you maybe write Henry's death and the seperation of the woodsman from him?

The first thing heremembered was a great, terrible, ripping sensation, like he was being torn from a larger whole and cast aside.

He had lost his other half, this he knew. Lost the soul he had been born from, lost the mind that he slept in when he wasn’t needed.

It shouldn’t feel this good to have his own body at last, freed from the confines and limits of human flesh and bone, able to stretch as much as he wanted…

Let his antlers stretch to the sky as big as he wanted, and revel rather than fear the multiple weights dangle from them…

To be himself, to let himself burn as hard and fast as he wanted, no fear of burning out.

But.

But he was in these woods (where were the woods he found himself in? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t care.) with no purpose, no reason.

There were saplings in his life and they were gone.

There was his evergreen, bright and beautiful and the most amazing thing he had ever known and she was gone.

He didn’t know how long he wandered in the dark, his axe dragging in the ground behind him, with only the fire of his hair to light his way.

All he knew was that he was considering just sitting down and letting himself root, to return to the forest when one day (one year? one month? one decade?) he heard a cry, a scream.

It was like the scream his sapling had made the day someone dug into her bark and ripped a piece of her away, and like that day he could smell the iron tang of sap, the bitter cold of fear-

He loped towards the cry, axe raised high, and came upon a tiny sapling, barely sprouted, cowering before a man, pants at his ankles and fist raised high.

Afterwards, as he gently scooped the sapling up in his arms, willed his axe away for the first time in…in…in a while, in order to wipe her tears away, and started to carry her to a place he could safely leave her, it occurred to him that this is what Henry would have done.

What he would have wanted him to do.

And it felt good to have a purpose again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A promise made and a promise broken.

A link between a [wedding](http://seiya234.tumblr.com/post/130530674419/meat-cute-99) and a [rescue](http://seiya234.tumblr.com/post/102822302509/the-woodsman).

———-

“This I promise you both.”

As Dipper began his blessing, sealing his promise with his blood and his power, a bitter tang filled his mouth. He had no idea why that would be.

“Yours is a love that will never be sundered. From now until the end of your days you will live together, make a life together….”

And he could see it all, see it unfurling and unwinding before his mind’s eye. Not the finer details but at the very least the large picture. And what a life it would be for the two of them. And Dipper felt so privileged, so lucky, that his sister and now his new brother had welcomed him into the life they would make together, into their home.

“And no matter what, at the end, you two will go together.”

In his mind’s eye he could see Mabel and Henry, two weeks from their hundredth wedding anniversary, falling asleep in each other’s arms and never waking. Mabel, Henry, and the ill-advised 120th birthday present of a motorcycle, a wheel rolling out of the wreckage.  And of course only Mabel would somehow die after an accident involving peanut butter, five kangaroos, and trying to pull an sick skateboarding trick for the grandkids at 118, Henry following a week later. Myriad possibilities, all of them painful, true, but all of them with Henry and Mabel. Together in life, and together in passing, as it was meant to be, as it should be.

“This is my blessing and this I promise.”

Dipper felt a little smug. There were, he had to admit, a few _small_  perks to being condemned to an eternity of demonhood, and this was one of them. Such was his power that no other force other than him could break this promise, sunder Mabel and Henry’s fates into two.

In his mouth, the bitter taste intensified as the happy couple kissed and Dipper began to sob.

——-

Dipper leaned his head against the wood of the attic door, solid and on this plane thanks to the feast he had reaped at Caney Patch (and it hadn’t lasted long enough, their suffering, no screams or pain could ever atone for what they had done-)

Inside, in Willow’s room were one-two-three stars, shivering even in their slumber. He and Henry barely had time to tuck Willow into bed before Acacia and Hank had bowled them over, diving under the covers with their sister, the three of them curling up together like puppies. The two men quickly left the room, to give the triplets space. Henry had shuffled down the stairs in order to call Mabel and leave a message for Stan and Dipper had gone to finish taking care of matters regarding the New Canaan Methodist Church.

And now here they were. Dipper had been telling himself for the last thirty minutes that he was going to go downstairs to check on his brother, Henry having undergone as much of an ordeal as Willow had. But he couldn’t pull himself away from his children. His consciousness was wrapped around theirs in a way he hadn’t done since from before they were born and still in the womb. He felt three heartbeats in his chest like it was his own, three pairs of lungs pushing air out and taking it in, nipped three nightmares in the bud before they could even take hold. And still it wasn’t enough, still he couldn’t convince himself that they were safe…

A great racking cough interrupted his thoughts and it took Dipper a second to gently free himself from the triplets to realize that it was  _him_  who was coughing. And suddenly he couldn’t stop the heaves of air violently tearing out of his body, stop the fit that brought him to his knees and hands in the hallway. With one last cough, something tore out of his throat and landed in his right hand. Dipper looked at it in bewilderment.

It was a clot of blood, golden and dark red congealed together into a sickly mass.

A strip of pain tore across Dipper’s left hand. He looked down and saw that the scar from the wedding, that had remained no matter what form he took, had suddenly split open. Blood pooled in his left hand to match the blood that had landed in his right.

“Dipper?”

Dipper’s head whipped up as he heard Henry’s voice coming up the stairs.

“Dipper are you okay? I heard you coughing and um. You don’t usually do that unless it’s a tooth that went down the wrong pipe…”

Henry came up and stood on the landing, looking worriedly at Dipper.

His head was crowned with antlers that were somewhere between wood and bone. From each tine hung a string that held a severed foot or hand. The blood was still fresh at the stumps, the flesh still twitching. Henry cocked his head, and the limbs swayed in time with Henry.

Dipper felt like he was going to be sick. The energy he had lent Henry was supposed to have gone away, dissipated after the conclusion of the deal they had made. But instead it had stayed and lingered. Henry’s soul had sucked it up, and before Dipper’s eyes he could see his brother’s body changing in a thousand subtle ways, his very  _soul_  transforming into something new that Dipper couldn’t even guess at.

Henry burned so bright now to his eyes, it almost hurt to look at him.

Now he knew where the blood came from.

“And no matter what, at the end, you two will go together. This is my blessing and this I promise.” His words echoed back at him in his head mockingly. A promise had been made and now a promise had been broken. He looked at Henry and a line that had stretched as long and as true as Mabel’s now was halved, the edges torn and burnt as it flapped in the breeze. Something precious had been broken, a path that was fated to be one forever cleaved, and already Dipper could sense the dizzying repercussions this one act would have in the future, a million billion moments changing because of this one.

Henry kept talking but Dipper couldn’t focus, not with the taste of bitter ashes in his mouth.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From this prompt on tumblr
> 
> Henry's parents find out about the Woodsman

Henry Pines put the receiver back onto the hook with a shaking hand. He leaned his head against the plaid newspaper of the wall and tried his best to remember how to breathe.

He was 44 years old, he was a father and a husband and a brother, he was a librarian and a damn fine cook if he didn’t say so himself and he was fine, he was  _fine._

Despite the turmoil roiling through stomach he couldn’t help but laugh at himself. He was old enough not to try and fool himself.

Speaking to his father for the first time in sixteen years was the antonym of fine. Speaking to his father who mentioned coming down to see his grandchildren was the antithesis of fine. Henry had refused, told his father that there was no way he would allow him or his mother within a hundred mile radius of his children. All his dad had done was laughed.

“Tough shit boy. Your mom wants to see them so we’re coming to see them, whether you like it or not.” Arnold Corduroy’s voice dropped lower. “Don’t think I don’t know what kind of weird freak shit you and that whore wife of yours do at the Shack. And if you throw me and your mom off the property, I’ll be back with the cops. Whose word they going to believe? Good churchgoing folk like me and your ma? Or preter-loving trash?”

Henry began to shake all over with the memory of his father’s words. He wasn’t worried about Durland and Blubs, they were good men and had known Mabel and Dipper since they were kids. No, he was more worried about the fact that the Shack was technically outside the city limits of Gravity Falls and thus under the jurisdiction of Deschutes County. To say that the county police was not known for their tolerance and understanding of Fallers was an immense understatement. It wouldn’t matter that he and Mabel had done nothing wrong, it would be his father’s word over his.

He ran his hands through his hair. The worse thing, the worse thing was all he needed to do was say one word to Dipper and this problem would be gone. But having Dipper deal with this would be like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. And Henry hated himself, hated that even after everything after they had done to him, even after what they threatened to do to his children, he still didn’t want his parents dead (and if Dipper helped, Henry knew that that would be the end result.) He was  _weak,_  he was  _worthless_  and he…

Henry shook his head. He was being ridiculous and more importantly, he needed to talk with Mabel and figure out what they were going to do. His parents were going to come down the day after tomorrow, and they needed to strategize.

Goddamnit. He thought that they were gone, thought that he and they were done. He shook now with anger as much as fear, and a tear streaked down his face. It was one thing for his parents to ruin him, he could take it, he was used to it. But the idea of them coming near his fierce Acacia, his sweet Hank, his fey Willow….They would break his children to pieces, shatter their spirits and dull their fire.

For a second he let his anger take over, fury flooding his mind and veins, and he punched the wall. The house shook to its rafters, dust came down from the ceiling, and Henry was abashed to see that his bleeding fingers had left a splintery dent in the wood.

Henry blushed.

If that wasn’t a sign to go and talk to Mabel, figure out how the hell they were going to get out of this mess, then he didn’t know what was. Shaking his head, he went to go find his wife.

In his shadow, a crown of antlers bloomed from the top of his shadow.

—–—————————-

It was night and outwardly everything was quiet.

The triplets were deep asleep, suitcases sprawled across the floor of their bedrooms. At sixteen, they knew that their parents wouldn’t pull them out of school and send them with Stan on a book buying trip to Idaho just because. But Willow had seen the fear and worry in their aura, and Hank had felt the house shake five minutes after the phone call and they were old enough to know there was a deeper reason. They were old enough to know and young enough not to question because they were still sixteen and they were getting to skip school.

Stan was deep asleep, having long ago taught himself through pain and necessity to get some sleep when he could. Hopefully nothing would go wrong when the Corduroys came, and Stan would bring the kids back from their “family vacation” in Caldwell with some grimoires he’d been meaning to get anyway. Worst case scenario, well. This wasn’t the first time he had gone on the run, shed one identity and created another. There was a small town in Alberta where he had some contacts, a place with the help of a demon he and the kids could start over again. Stan slept deeply because he was old and he thought he was done running. Stan slept well because if this was the last night in his home he wanted it to be a good one.

The house was peaceful because Dipper wasn’t there sleeping with Mabel and Henry, or watching bad movies on TV or switching the labels on all the containers on Henry’s spice rack. The house was peaceful because Dipper was in the Mindscape screaming and raging and burning. His fury shook the dreams of the sensitive, caused a minor tremor in the Nevadan desert, and created a rain of offal over the entirety of Thailand. He was furious that his family, his family who he fought so hard to protect, who had been through so much, was going to be shattered and there was nothing he could do. He was furious because there was something he could do, and Henry wouldn’t let him do it, his feelings his heart clouding his brain from the obvious solution. He was furious at himself for even thinking that last thought, furious because he couldn’t stop thinking it. The Shack remained at peace but its shadowy counterpart burst into flame over and over again, its rafters shaking with roars of rage.

The Shack was quiet, the Shack was at peace, and as Henry tossed and turned, his dreams wracked with pain and worry, a pilot light lit within his soul.

Currently, it was nothing. Currently, it was only a small seed within Henry’s soul, a seed that was already being referred to as the Woodsman…. But for now Henry was the Woodsman and the Woodsman was Henry and they were one and the same. And yet, the seed was still there.  Right now it was mostly content to sleep, to grow. One day it would bloom and sprout from this soul, split and cleave as the soul it was born from rejoined the cycle and the meat it was borrowing returned to the dirt. One day it would have its own identity, its own soul, but for now it was mostly satisfied to sleep and observe.

What it observed was a man who would do anything, be anything to protect his family. Not just his family, but his friends, and anyone who needed help. Henry John Pines defended the defenseless, guarded those who needed guarding, helped the helpless. He gave and gave and gave of himself and the seed could tell that it would one day kill him, the fire that blazed bright and tall to incubate the seed would kill Henry. It would kill him but if presented with the choice to prolong his life, to smother the seed within him, Henry wouldn’t choose otherwise.

And yet the protector was without protection.

Nestled as it was within Henry’s soul, it had weathered the flaming waves of fear and anger and hurt, felt the iron will that had kept all of it outwardly under control. Nestled as it was deep inside, it could see the wounds that Henry had acquired at those that sprouted him, gaping gashes that oozed blood sluggishly, bruises so dark purple and blue they almost appeared black. Outwardly Henry was calm. In his mind still he was calm, planning and preparing and ticking like clockwork. Yet deep within, his soul screamed, wept and blazed with terror that their plan wouldn’t work, that his parents would get his children. Henry’s soul was a whirlwind of fear and pain and anger, and the seed was still growing, still only a tiny flame in the dark.

It was a flame buffeted and fed by Henry’s anguish, and it felt itself grow stronger, felt its awareness of itself and what it could do grow. It wasn’t ready yet to leave, wasn’t ready yet to leave and become, wasn’t ready yet to meet its destiny.

But with Henry’s soul curled protectively around it, even unconsciously seeking to protect the seedling, it felt itself begin to  _stretch._

Maybe it wasn’t ready to sprout, to grow. But there was something it  _could_  do.

With senses that were growing and developing even as it thought about its next action, it reached out and  _stretched-_

————-

Arnold Corduroy woke up not in the arms of Trisha, the waitress with banging tits at Our Glass that he fucked every Wednesday when Rita was out at her church service, but in the  _forest_ of all places.

He sat up, rubbing his head. _Fuck_  he had a headache. He must have drank a fuck of a lot more than usual if he ended up out here rather than Trisha’s bed or the bed of his truck. Well, he knew his way around here well enough, he’d be out and back home before Rita got there in no tim-

“Miao.”

Arnold looked down.

At his feet, shivering and licking piteously at his boots, was a kitten. Its fur was patchy and moth eaten and its skull was caved in, bits of brain and bone poking through the blood matted fur. A memory briefly flashed in his mind, of an orange kitten just like the one below him that the boy had brought home one day and tried to hide from Arnold but he dismissed the thought. It wasn’t important. He looked with disgust at the pathetic runt that was in his way. He drew his foot back and kicked it as hard as he could, feeling a small twinge of satisfaction at the feeling of soft flesh giving way to his foot. The thing squeaked and cried as it sailed up and out through the air. Normally he wouldn’t have wasted any more time thinking about the runt but wasn’t expecting the thing to land in the arms of…of…

Arnold Corduroy prided himself on being a  _man,_  of being scared of nothing, of standing his ground and fighting anyone or anything that dared defy him. But at the sight of the monster in front of him, barely glimpsed but still enough to freeze his marrow to his bones was enough to set him running. He turned and began to dash through the forest. As he ran, he quickly began to notice that his surroundings were somehow different. He knew this place like the back of his hand, had hunted here for years, fished in its streams, and occasionally taken down some trees for firewood. The forest, more than his house or being in town, was his home. It was his to read and his to control.

But now somehow everything had changed. This wasn’t the forest he knew though it outwardly looked the same. He kept tripping over exposed plant roots even though there were almost no kind of trees in the forest that would have them. The birds, far from being scared off by his noise, instead swooped down to peck at his neck and shoulders, at his face and eyes, and soon he was covered in tiny cuts on his arms from fending them off. The deer too, instead of running off, bared their teeth at Arnold. Deer only ate plants, everyone knew that but Arnold also knew to his bones that this night, in this forest, if he fell down and stayed down the deer would be on him, teeth tearing and ripping. Thorny vines and bushes seemed to continuously pop into his way, thorns tearing at his flesh. And constantly, fading in and out of the trees, always at the corner of his eyes, always two or three steps behind, was the  _thing_.

The forest, Arnold realized, was alive around him in a way it had never been before, alive and  _angry._

He ran and he ran until a voice rang out through the forest.

**“ _Enough_.”**

The voice shook the trees and the earth, rattled Arnold to his bones and sent him falling to the ground. He landed against the trunk of a tree, his head slamming against the trunk. Before he had the chance to stand up, vines ripped out of the lay ground and wrapped themselves around him, binding him against the tree. Arnold struggled and tried to break free, but the vines only grew tighter. He felt himself become so constricted that he couldn’t breathe. At that point, Arnold stopped struggling. He could wait, could take his time until the opportunity to break free presented itself (and it would, it always did.)

From the shadows from the trees the creature emerged. It had to have been ten or even twelve feet tall, and was skeletally thin, skin barely covering bone and whipcord muscle. Legs that were back jointed like a horse or a deer shot out of ragged blue jeans, and a tattered plaid shirt covered the top half of the animal. In its right hand it held an axe…but held wasn’t the right word, not when the wood of the shaft was…was  _growing_  into its skin, punching in to flesh until it was almost impossible to tell where skin ended and wood began. Its face was long, skeletal, and as pale as bone or snow. Instead of eyes it only had two black pits, as if its eyeballs had completely retreated back into the skull. The creature’s crowning feature was a pair of antlers bursting from the blue fire that made up its hair.  Arnold unconsciously tried to count the points on them but there were too many, being as they were an odd cross between wood and bone, branching out like the limbs of a tree. Hanging from each tine by a string was a severed foot or hand, the blood still fresh, the flesh still warm.

Within the antlers of the monster in front of him, the rotting kitten he had taken care of earlier laid asleep, two of the dangling hands holding it up.

The  _monster_  leaned in until it was inches away from Arnold’s face, peering at him like it couldn’t decide what to do to him first. It’s breath was hot and warm against Arnold’s face and it smelt like blood, like rot, like  _death_ and fuck he was going to die here, and not even on his feet and-

The kitten woke up, stretched out, and then licked one of the creature’s antlers. The thing paused, and then stood up. It cocked its head like it was listening to something, and then nodded. Its features began to run like melted wax, dripping and dribbling and Arnold felt a dangerous weakness in his bladder as the creature melted away to reveal-

Arnold couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Henry?”

His son stood before him where the creature had stood. In his hand he held a piece of antler, his fingers rubbing the tine absently. He was dressed like a ponce, tailored black pants, a black button up shirt, a fucking suit jacket and tie and stupid shiny shoes, all black as well. Henry still wore glasses, and it was obvious to Arnold his weakling son was still spending too much time reading and not enough time outside. Probably the same reason his face was pale, freckles and scars standing out more than usual.

“Hey Dad.”

Arnold snorted. “What’s with that fag getup? You’re in the goddamn forest-what’s the matter? You soft? You ashamed of me and your mom?”

“Are… are you serious? You’re in a weird forest and _that’s_ the first thing you say to me? I-” Henry shook and shuddered, like the coward that Arnold knew his son to be. His hand clutched at the antler piece tighter for a second and the air seemed to shake and shudder around him.

“No, no not yet….” he muttered.

“You talking to me boy?”

Henry shut his eyes and took a breath.

“No. No Dad.” He opened his eyes again. “If I let you go, will you stay here while we talk?”

“You? Let me go? How the fuck you going to do that son?”

Henry looked at Arnold over the tops of his glasses and god that look set his blood on fire. How _dare_ his flesh and blood sass him, disrespect him like that? He’d teach him, Arnold wasn’t a cripple and Henry was never too old for a hiding.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll stay here. Running is for cowards anyway.”

Henry squeezed the antler again (and what was up with that, it was starting to give Arnold the heebie jeebies it was making him mad) and the vines curled up and retreated back into the ground.

Arnold stood up and immediately launched at Henry, sending his fist sailing towards his son’s nose. He had never broken that before, and it was a mistake he was about to correct. But his fist never connected because Henry stabbed himself in the arm with the antler and it wasn’t Henry’s face that caught his hand but a spider like hand. The creature was back and it roared as tendrils of wood began to engulf Arnold’s fist, quickly hiding his hand away and beginning to crawl up his arm.

Arnold Corduroy was a man, he wasn’t no pussy and he wasn’t going to scream in terror like a little girl. But then the thing lifted him up by their conjoined hands don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream and slammed him hard against the trunk of the pine tree. It knelt down and its corpse face once again was next to his don’t scream don’t scream and rot rolled across Arnold’s face, the hands on the thing’s antlers reaching towards him don’t scream Christ don’t scream-

“I want to kill you right now,” it rasped, and goosebumps broke out all over his skin. How was it talking, its mouth was all stitched over how-

_“Look at me when I’m talking.”_

Arnold’s eyes, which had been frantically looking everywhere but the face of the monster in front of him snapped to the two holes that served as the things eyes.

It huffed and another wave of rot and damp earth rolled over him, filling his nose and lungs until it felt like he was drowning.

“I want to kill you, but the one inside wishes otherwise. We have taken hands and feet for less than what you have done but the one inside wants to speak to you. So you will stand-” the thing shook him once, twice, and Arnold’s head hit the trunk of the tree. “-and you will listen and if you try a stunt like that again-”

The wooden tendrils that until then had only rested on the surface of his skin suddenly pierced flesh and now Arnold did scream as he felt wood root into his flesh, wood burrow into his muscle, expanding and digging further and further, felt his skin split and open unable to contain what was now inside him-

The thing shook Arnold again, tearing another scream out of him as it tore the roots out of him. He fell to a bloody heap on the ground, panting and shaking all over.

“Well,” the monster purred above him, blue fire bursting to life in its eyes as the rotting kitten crawled out of the breast pocket of its tattered shirt and began to crawl onto its shoulders. One of the hands closest to the runt leaned in and picked up, placing it among the antlers. “I think it would be ironic don’t you? The lumberjack cut down for kindling?” The kitten licked another tine of the antlers and suddenly Arnold was fine, like nothing had ever happened, and Henry was back, tucking the piece of antler through a buttonhole in his jacket, like an odd boutonniere.

Arnold scrambled to his feet.

“I…what… _how?_ You-you-”

Henry sighed.

“I just want to know one thing Dad.”

“You telling _me_ what to do boy? I am your father and-”

Henry looked Arnold in the eyes. His son’s eyes were no longer brown but the hot electric blue of the creature’s fire. Arnold shut his mouth.

“Why do you want to see the kids?”

Arnold snorted. “All that for that?”

“Answer the question Dad. Why?”

He puffed his chest up. “Well why shouldn’t we? We’re their grandparents. They’re our grandkids and we have a right-”

Henry’s words rang out like a shot in the woods. _“No._ You don’t. But that’s not here or there? Why now?”

Arnold was silent and Henry went on. “I haven’t talked to you since we let you know the kids were born. No letters, no calls, nothing but radio silence. What changed?”

“Fuck kid, we’re getting older and we just want to see them okay? See them, tell them some truths-”

“Like the truth you aren’t telling me?”

Arnold scowled, and unconsciously he rolled his sleeves up.

“You watch your tone boy.”

Henry’s eyes grew cold.

“I want the truth Dad. Tell me or I’ll take it from you.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “How? You going to beat it out of me? That’s not you Henry, you were always too cowardly to get your hands bloody.”

Henry dragged his palm across the point of the antler tucked in his jacket. He held up his hand to show Arnold the thick, sludgy black blood that began to trickle down from the wound.

“More party tricks? Why don’t you fight me like a real man instead of hiding like a-” Arnold stopped as he felt a vine begin to crawl up his left leg, curling around his jeans, circling his torso.

“H-how?”

The vine curled around his neck until it came to the base of his skull. At the nape it pierced his skin and Arnold screamed as he felt roots like a net weave their way into his skull, piercing his brain. Through the pain he noticed his son drop his bleeding hand to the side. A vine similar to the one trapping him sprung from the ground and dove deep into the wound on Henry’s hand.

The pain faded and Henry said, “Now. Let’s try that again. Why are you and Mom so eager to see the kids? What do you want from my children?”

Suddenly Arnold was taken back to two years ago, when Rita fell on the steps of the church one Sunday and broke her leg and she had spent six weeks recovering, six weeks of not cooking or cleaning or doing his laundry for him and _he_ had had to do that. Taken back to when Rita pursed her lips and said “I sure wish we had some help around here.”

It had only been a stray sentence, a whim, a wisp, but instead it lingered, grew like ivy against the walls of a house. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a girl around the house, to make dinner and hang out sheets on the line? Wouldn’t it be nice to have to have a boy to drive the logging truck and clear out a patch faster than Arnold on his own? Wouldn’t it be nice to try again, to take the mistakes they made with Henry and correct them? Wouldn’t it be nice to take it a little easier and have younger hands do the hard work while Arnold and Rita took some well-earned rest? Wouldn’t it be better to take their grandchildren into their own hands, because Lord only knew what kind of damage Henry and that whore wife were doing to them?

The thoughts continued to build and build. They built as they saw the well behaved children of their fellow parishioners at New Canaan on Sundays, their eyes low and to the ground as was right in the presence of their elders.  They built as Arnold’s joints began to ache, built as it took longer and longer for Rita to dust the whole house every day. They built as Rita read op-ed’s written by Mabel Pines in the _Portland Tribune_ about the importance of tolerance or some rot like that. They built as Arnold reached out to an old drinking buddy of his on the police force in Kinzua and asked what the cops were like in Deschutes County. They built and built and built until one day Arnold picked up a phone and-

“So. You really do want to take the kids.” Henry shook his head. “More fool me. Part of me had hoped that…that you really did just want to see them only. It would have been a disaster but it’s better than _this._ ”

Arnold somehow found the ability to make his mouth move and work again. “You’re ruining those kids boy. We learned from you, we were too soft but we’ll do better now. We’ll teach them some respect, we’ll fix all those years of you fucking them up. We’ll make a _real_ man of that son of yours; and I bet that wife of yours is making those girls too uppity. Your mom will stop that real quick.”

Henry hissed as the vine dug deeper into the gaping hole in his palm. “Do you even know their names?”

“Yeah. Casey, Hank, and Waller.”

“How old are they?”

“Fourteen? Thirteen? Does it fucking matter?”

Henry’s eyes flashed that electric blue again. “Yes. It does. And what if they don’t do what you ask them too?”

Arnold smiled. “You remember boy.”

“Oh. You mean this?”

And suddenly his body flared with pain. His ribs broke on one side, burns appeared on his face, his arms, and bruises flowered from his head to toes. His nose spouted blood like a gusher, while his eyes felt like they were being hammered on. A hundred invisible feet and hands kicked and punched at Arnold all at once. As soon as the onslaught had begun it went away again, leaving Arnold gasping and shaking all over.

“I remember Dad. I remember every single bit.” Henry’s free hand reached up to the antler in his lapel and squeezed it as he shook and trembled all over. “And now you want to do that to my children.”

“It would be good for them! They need to learn discipline, they need to learn respect they need to-“

“Have the shit beaten out of them?” Up until now Henry’s voice had remained calm, quiet, womanish, but now his son began to raise his voice. “Have you crush and abuse them until their souls die? Have you destroy my family? How _dare_ you.”

Arnold rolled his eyes.

“What are you going to do to me boy? This isn’t the real world, I’ve figured that out by now. When we wake up me and your mother are going to take what’s owed us. Even if you hid them away we’ll find them. Those kids are _ours_ now and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.”

Henry only stared at him and this was his son, this was his disappointment, and he was only a weedy little runt but Arnold looked at Henry’s eyes and saw them _burn._ Arnold looked at Henry, and the vine that had been greedily drinking out of the wound on Henry’s hand began to glow a soft green, the veins up Henry’s neck and in his wrists doing the same.  

“Do you want to know what will happen if you take my children?” Henry asked softly, and the hair on the back of Arnold’s neck lifted which was ridiculous because his son was a runt (was taller than him) his son was weak (was glowing with power) and Arnold wasn’t scared (he was terrified.) “Why don’t I show you?”

The root that was embedded into his skull twitched, making Arnold spasm and hiss, and suddenly he was overwhelmed, flooded with thoughts and images that didn’t come from him. Two tall redheaded girls in his living room, dressed plainly and ugly sullen looks on their faces as the thin one vacuumed and the fat one dusted behind the TV. Out in the yard a boy as tall as Henry chopped firewood, hate twisting his face as he brought his axe down harder than needed on each log.

“You don’t ever break their spirits though you and Mom try, oh goodness how you both try.” Arnold didn’t see Henry but his son’s voice rang loud and clear like a bell in his ears. “You try and split them apart, try and play them off one another but my daughters, my son are no fools, they see through you like a piece of saran wrap. And they plan and plot their escape, and they would have made it until the day Willow needs her inhaler and you refuse to give it to her.”

A flash and the thin girl was suddenly on the carpet, gasping for breath, turning blue and clutching at her throat. Arnold was there, holding the other two back even though they were scratching, biting and punching at him. Rita held a small plastic inhaler and was frowning down at the thin brat writing on the rug.

“You don’t give Willow her inhaler. I mean, after all she’s just faking, she’s just being a baby, she needs to grow up and get off the floor before you give her something to cry about-“

Henry paused talking and for a second Arnold got a flash of the creature again. Somehow it was even more monstrous than before, twelve or fifteen feet tall, large wooden spines punching out of its back and glistening with blood, ichor pouring from its eyes, and the tips of its antlers aflame. Then it was back to the reality that Henry was showing him, the thin girl’s struggles slowing, then stopping, as the other two teenagers began to scream.

“And then Willow dies. You let Willow die, she dies in front of Hank and Acacia, and all you and Mom can think about is what a bother this is.”

The scene switched to a world on fire, of his other two grandchildren held in floating red and yellow bubbles with odd symbols on them while a dark blur tore through the town, eating and tearing and _ripping_ -

“This ends with the end of the world. Because I am the brother of a demon, and my children are the people he loves more than anything else,  are the only people sometimes that keep him sane, and when you killed Willow you killed the world-“

The scene wrenched again and Arnold recoiled to see him and Rita in bed, blood and bone pooling around their heads and soaking into their pillows as an old man nonchalantly cleaned a gun.

“This ends with your deaths because there are years of Stan’s life, years of my father-in-law’s life, that he’s never told us specific details about but I have a good idea of what he did.”

Again the scene melted away and he saw himself and Rita sniveling and crying like babies, huddled in a puddle of their own piss in the corner of a room.

“This ends with the loss of your sanity because my wife has a bat, my wife has _so_ many tools in her arsenal, and you should have never even thought about going near the children of Chaos.”

And they were back in the clearing, and it was once again only him and his son.

“I am not alone any more. I have a family now, and each and every one of them will pay you back in kind if you even think about touching our children.”

Arnold only stared at Henry, pale as death, his black clothes helping him fade into the dark forest around them.

Henry stared back with those odd blue eyes for a second then blew out a breath. The vine that was in his wound began to retract into the wound, into Henry’s body. Arnold felt something loosen in his skull and cried out as the roots pulled out of his brain, his nerves, and out of his skin. He fell to the ground in shock, but quickly pulled himself back up.

“I’m going to give you a chance Dad. Promise me that you’ll leave our children alone, that you’ll leave my wife and brother alone, leave my family alone, and all this ends right here. Nothing else happens and I’ll-“

Arnold launched himself at Henry, who, surprised, had no time to brace himself before Arnold bowled him over, sending them both sprawling to the ground. Henry punched Arnold in the face, harder than he should have been able to, but Arnold ignored it, instead grabbing the piece of antler in the lapel of Henry’s jacket. The cloth tore easily from the force of Arnold’s hand, and Arnold quickly scooted back, getting up and dancing outside and away from Henry’s grasp.

Arnold began to laugh, watching scornfully as his son stood up, even paler than usual and eyes burning with fury. “You’re _weak,_ you’re _nothing_ without this doodad. I’m not fucking stupid boy. You got yourself some kind of magic thing, made a deal but it don’t matter. I got this and the deal is off. That monster is _mine_ to call now, and-“Arnold narrowed his eyes at Henry. The boy didn’t cower like he used to when he was little and Arnold shot him that look, but he could live with that disappointment.  “You’ve gotten too big for your britches, thinking you can order me around.” Arnold took the tip of the antler and scratched across his skin, Henry’s eyes tracing the blood that welled up. “You think you’re so high and mighty? You think you can tell me what to do? That you can _win?_ It’s time I taught you a lesson that will _stick_.”

Seconds went by and nothing happened. Arnold growled with frustration and whirled around, tossing the useless piece of shit into the darkness of the woods. Arnold watched it sail into the trees. “Why didn’t that fucking work?” he growled.

“Because the Woodsman isn’t a thing that comes at my call.”

Arnold whirled around. Henry stood there, different once again. He wore only a black t-shirt, soft and worn, and blue jeans that were a little too short for him, his bare feet and ankles poking out at the ends. The moth eaten kitten wove in and around his legs, purring like an outboard motor. But the great antlers of bone and wood that the monster had had were now bursting out of Henry’s crown of red hair, the hands and feet twitching on the ends of their strings and the tip of every tine alit with blue flame.

In his hands he held an axe, the metal no longer bright and new, the wood of the handle worn with long years of usage.

Henry took one, two steps forward, and the ground trembled as his feet lightly touched the ground.

“You thought that we were two, not one?” Henry shook his head. “I should have known better that you wouldn’t make that connection. Should have known better about a lot of things.”

Another step and the dirt roiled and bubbled until a flatish boulder became exposed to the air, birthed out of the earth.

“He wanted to protect me from this, my other self. This whole thing was his idea, you know? He thought he would be the only one here but he’s still too young, he’s growing, so here I am with him.“ Henry smiled. “When his time comes, he’s really going to be something else. Someone _amazing_.”

The edge of the axe was keen and sharp, and Arnold tried to run, tried to talk, tried to do _something_ but he was rooted to the spot, unable to move a single inch.

His son came to a stop before him. Arnold had a hundred pounds on him, Arnold was tougher and bigger and stronger and better than Henry but looking up into his son’s eyes, suddenly he was viscerally, terribly afraid.

“I’ve given you chances and you threw them away. I left you alone, I left you in peace and still you came after me. You tried to take my family away, you wanted to _hurt_ and that I can never, ever forgive.”

His throat and face tingled, and Arnold found he was able to speak again.

“What…what _are_ you?”

Henry looked at him, and there was something else, something bigger in his gaze, something that made him feel like the very Earth was looking through his son’s eyes as well.

“I’m Henry John Pines. I’m a father, I’m a husband and a brother and a nephew. I am the Woodsman. And today, I am your Judgement.”

Henry moved around him and shoved Arnold down to his knees, grabbing nerveless hands and placing them on the boulder weep, huge racking sobs tearing out of him. He still couldn’t move but his body shook all over, fear. His son raised the axe and Arnold suddenly knew what was coming. He began to making him tremble like a leaf as tears and snot streamed down his face.

“No, no, Henry no, you’re my son, I love you, please, I won’t do it I’ll leave you and yours alone please please plea-“

The axe fell onto his wrists, severing his hands from his body and Arnold _screamed_ -

\--------------------------------------------------------

Arnold Corduroy shot up in his bed with a gasp, panting and wild eyed. Next to him, Trisha rolled over but kept on snoring, somehow not woken up by the noise.

Arnold sighed in relief. It was just a dream, just a really weird dream. He’d get in his truck and drive home- Rita knew better than to ask questions. They’d eat breakfast and then they’d go down to Gravity Falls to pick up their grandchildren and-

Arnold looked down at his hands. He opened his mouth to scream but shock closed up his throat, letting only a squeak out.

His hands were still there, all ten fingers still wiggling and working, but the flesh of his hands were now mottled, purple and red and green like the angriest bruise or the beginnings of frostbite. And his wrists….his wrists were now a mess of thick ropy scars, fatter than his finger crossing over each other. They ached and throbbed in time with his heartbeat and Arnold suddenly knew somehow that they would _always_ ache, just like he would never be able to hide them with long sleeves, just like his hands would always be discolored, would always be corpse cold, until he died.

And there was his son at the foot of his bed. His axe was bloody, and his face covered in splatter. Hanging from his antlers Arnold saw his own hands, even though they were still attached to his arms. Arnold saw his hands, saw next to them a pair of hands that had the same color nail polish that Rita used….

Death looked at him from the foot of his bed, drew the blade of the axe across the air over his throat, and then vanished, leaving Arnold alone in the room once again.

Arnold shivered, and absently wondered if he would ever be warm again.

\----------

They were pleasantly surprised when Rita and Arnold never showed, though Mabel was curious why Rita only screamed and hung up when she called to confirm that they weren’t coming. Henry had no idea.

As he called Stan to tell him that he and the kids could come home, that it was all clear, Henry rubbed at his forehead. His head felt… _heavier_ today for some reason, which was odd. He hadn’t had to bring the Woodsman out in a while, his axe was clean. Also odd was the feeling he had when he woke up this morning, of having been a part of something important. Maybe it was his dreams, though he didn’t recall what he dreamt about.

He heard Dipper talking to Mabel from the other room.

“But what if they do something like this again Mabes?”

Henry smiled.

He wasn’t sure how he knew, but knew he did that his parents would never, ever bother him or his again.


	13. Chapter 13

Rita Corduroy sat and drank tea in her sitting room.

A draft blew in from the door to the garage, the door to Arnold’s room, but she ignored it with long practice. It wasn’t like that door was ever opened anyway; Arnold went around the house and entered the garage through the garage door. Not through  _her_  room. Not ever.

Here in this room there was a place for everything and everything had a place. The wall was painted her favorite shade of pink, a lovely light coral, with mint green carpet to compliment it. Lacy white curtains that she had gotten from her mother kept the harshest of the afternoon light out of the room. Every wall was adorned with several crosses and crucifixes, from the rhinestone cross she had gotten at last year’s rodeo, to the four foot crucifix complete with blood and tears painted on that she had bought at Walmart when she and Arnold first had gotten married. Her favorite poem, Footsteps, took the place of pride over the fireplace, while Arnold’s one contribution to the room, a Jon Wayne memorial poster, she had relegated next to the garage door. Forty years of collecting various axioms, platitudes, and sayings were reflected on each wall of her room. There was her cuckoo clock that she had saved up a year of pin money to get. There was her great-great grandmother’s old sewing machine, complete with push pedal that Rita still used. Here there was maybe no reason for the couches and chairs to be covered in plastic because Arnold would never sit in here but yet they still were. Here bowls of potpourri sat on every surface, exuding the smell of cinnamon into the air. Here an old TV was sitting, ready for her soaps. Here everything was perfect and everything was  _hers._

Rita Corduroy sat and drank tea in her sitting room, sat and drank at the tiny table for two that she had gotten at a yard sale ten years ago.

Rita Corduroy sat and drank tea in her sitting room and across from her was her son, drinking tea out of a cracked coffee mug that read “World’s Best Dad.” The utensils laid in front of him wasn’t her good wedding silver that she used only in here but instead were odd, rough, battered things, with what looked like handles made out of deer antlers. One minute she had been alone and the next she was not but she didn’t find it as odd as perhaps she ought.

“Henry.”

“Mom.”

Rita looked at her son. Like his father, he usually dressed plainly, and she remembered years of washing flannel shirts and ratty blue jeans when he was growing up. But now he was all natty and nice, dressed head to toe in black, from his suit jacket to (she snuck a peek under the table) his fancy leather loafers, pitch black like the night sky. He looked paler than usual, freckles sticking out like blood splatter (where had that association come from?) across his face. She could see the first strands of grey in his red curls, and the beginnings of crow’s feet at his eyes.

His knuckles were bloodied and battered, like he had just punched a wall, a stark contrast to the rest of his calm, collected appearance.

Rita looked down at her cup, to see it was empty. She sniffed.

“Henry John Corduroy-”

“Pines. It’s Pines now Ma.”

For a second she stiffened, the pink of the walls turned into something more visceral, the TV began to blare scenes of big cats taking down antelope, but then Rita blew the breath out of her mouth.

“Yes. Well, Henry, I  _know_  I raised you with better manners than this.” She glared pointedly at her empty cup.

Henry took the hint and poured her another cup, adding two sugars and a splash of cream just like she liked it, just like she had taught him (trained him). But he didn’t utter a word of apology. Instead he made his cup of tea (cream since it was just the two of them, and one sugar). Without having to be asked he took up the tongs and placed from the tray of pastries in the middle of the table some macaroons and muffins on to her plate, adding a scone on to his.

For a second there was silence again, as they drank their tea, nibbled at the pastries. Then she cleared her throat.

“What brings my prodigal son home?”

Henry arched an eyebrow. “I’m married, I have kids and a house and a job and I take care of the ones I love. Most people would take that as a good thing.”

Rita sniffed. “You don’t call. You don’t write, and you certainly don’t come visit or help support your father and I.”

Henry sipped from his piece of grimcrackery. “Last I heard, Dad won second place at the Oregon Lumberjack Games and beat out men half his age. Somehow I think you two are doing fine. And neither have you have given me a good reason to contact either of you.”

Rita’s voice whipped out, icy cold. “A reason? Son you do not  _need_ a reason. We are your mother and father and you owe us your respect. I brought you in to this world, we fed and clothed you, put a roof over your head. You should be _grateful_  for all we have done for you-”

Henry gripped the antler bone handle, the unsanded spurs cutting into his hands and drawing blood that leaked onto her tablecloth-and that was going to take forever to take out- and then it wasn’t Henry sitting in the chair any more.

If she didn’t know any better she would have said that the thing in front of her was a demon straight out of Hell. Rita was used to tall men but this thing was inhumanly so, eleven or twelve feet. Its face was pitch white like a corpse and instead of eyes, there was only skin that dove into empty pitch black sockets. Blue flames curled and licked at the base of antlers that were somehow wood and bone in one. She sniffed to see the gruesome fruit dangling from each tine. One arm ended in an axe that grew into its skin. That arm rested on the floor while the other wrapped a spider like hand around the handle of the mug, its fingers growing root like over the handle. Its clothes-a flannel shirt and blue jeans-were in dirty tatters, and it hunched over the table. Its mouth was stitched shut but from the skull-like holes in its face, hot damp air that smelt of rot rolled over the table.

Something brushed against her leg under the table. She looked to see a filthy, disgusting kitten purring and rubbing against her legs. It was-Heaven above-it was rotten and moth-eaten, bony ribs visible and its face half caved in. She kicked it, the point of her shoe digging into the flesh and adding to her disgust. It gave a cry of pain, sending a ping of vindication through her. It reappeared a second later, sitting in the lap of the creature and purring.

Rita drew herself up in her chair. “ _Well_! I knew Gravity Falls was a pit of sin but I didn’t expect  _you_  to fall to the lure of dark magic. I thought we raised you better than that.”

The creature- she knew it was Henry but she couldn’t bring herself to call the twisted thing he had become by the name of her son- snorted, sending another wave of rank breath over the table. “You raised him,” it said finally, in a voice like scratching nails down a chalkboard. “But with the poor soil and poisoned water you gave him, it’s a miracle he sprouted and grew at all.”

“What’s with all the speaking la-di-da son? I  _know_  you don’t think you’re better than us darling.”

“Actually, I think my other self is better than you both,” the creature said. It lifted the mug to its mouth, and then, as if to mock her, drank with the loudest slurp possible.

Rita’s brow furrowed. “Other self? Henry, I thought you stopped reading that weird fantasy rot a long time ago. Talk sense.”

“Oh, yes, Henry remembers that day, and now so do I.” In the background the TV flickered from  _One Life to Live_ to a video of her and Henry when he had been about eight, burning the filth that he had brought into the house in the kitchen sink. She remembered that day well; she had found out that he had gotten a library card behind their backs and was reading all sorts of…of… Of things she _certainly_  didn’t approve of. She had waited until it was almost time for Arnold to come home and then burnt the books one by one. He had tried to shy away once or twice but she had grabbed him by the hair she kept a little too long for Arnold’s liking for that purpose, kept him in place to make sure he understood what he had done wrong. Her husband had come in time to see Henry crying and proceeded to tan his hide for her.

“He never forgot that day you know, never forgot having to collect tin cans after school to cash them in to repay for the books. Never forgot the kindness of his school librarian who looked at the money he had in his hand and at a boy who clearly had seven kinds of shit beat out of him and told him that maybe he could help her during recess instead? Cleaning the books, checking the pages for tears.” Another loud slurp.

Was she supposed to feel bad that some chit at her son’s school indulged him? Rita scowled. “That doesn’t answer my question son. Why are you talking like you aren’t Henry when you are?”

The kitten climbed up the tatters of its shirt, perched on its shoulder, and began to bat at one of the hands that hung from its antlers. A freshly severed hand that was dripping blood on her carpet and was part of an abomination shouldn’t exude a tired patience but there it was.

“Because I am a part of Henry, born out of magic and love-” The thing had no eyes but somehow Rita just knew it was rolling them at her, sassing her. “Things you willingly know nothing of, things you could have had but threw away like trash.” The kitten had moved on from the hand to a foot that twitched like it was being tickled as the mangy beast batted at it. The thing straightened its back until it sat proud and tall, the ceiling somehow not an impediment to its height and antlers. The room became cold, a cold that wrapped itself around her bones and sunk into her muscles. The walls dropped away, revealing an endless expanse of trees that faded into the dark. The tips of its antlers burst aflame and it was blasphemous, blasphemous to even think the thought but Rita knew down to her very soul that this was Death that she was looking at.

“One day I will be born from fire and pain, and we will become two. One day I will have dominion over the woods and forests. One day I will shelter all those who have been hurt and betrayed by those like you, those who should have protected them. But today is not that day.” Her room faded back into view, her pictures and statues and things a familiar warm comfort. The thing in front of her slumped back down.

“Today however, I am still only one, not fully two. Today I am here to help the man who cradles and nurtures me in his soul.” The kitten began to lick the tines of his antlers, the corpse flesh of his forehead. “And he’s ready to come back out.” The creature looked around her room for a second and then it was once again Henry, once again her son sitting in front of her, still in undertaker black with his odd horn silverware (she had to get that away from him.) Rita turned her head to take comfort in her favorite crucifix, the one with gold and silver gilt, and despite her best efforts let out a little cry because this  _was not her room anymore._

The walls were no longer a soothing pink but were a gaudy and horribly tacky plaid wallpaper. Parts of the paper had peeled away to reveal roughhewn wooden planks underneath. The painting she had bought herself from Thomas Kincaid for Mother’s Day last year now depicted the rickety cabin of sin that Henry lived in now, and to add insult to injury, the individualized bits of paint the salesman had added were still there. The print of Jesus feeding the hungry was now a short brown haired woman dressed like a neon colored trollop dishing out casserole to three small red headed children. John Wayne was gone, replaced by an odd and ugly one eyed old man in a suit, wearing a fez with a heathen symbol on it and a cane topped by an eight ball. Rita almost cried to see that her crosses and crucifixes had been turned into bizarre patchwork abominations, several pieces of taxidermied animals glued together and “dinosaur” bones and that simply terrible taking fish thing that Arnold persisted in laughing at. The painting of Jesus that she had done on black velvet had not only turned into Elvis, but he was…he was… _mid-thrust._  The old portrait of her Great-Aunt Eugenia that she had inherited had now become a portrait of a brassy looking woman with far too much eye makeup, gaudy golden hoops in her ears and a purple dress.

She glared at Henry who was sipping from his mug once again, not a hair out of place, though the antler silverware was now stained with blood.

“My son, consorting with demons and the damned.” Rita pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’m ashamed of you Henry.”

The woman who was in the place of Great-Aunt Eugenia scowled and another piece of wallpaper peeled off the wall, but calmly Henry replied, “I can’t say that I’m exactly proud of you and Dad either.” For a second his eyes blazed bright electric blue, sending a shiver down her spine, but then he looked away and sighed. He helped himself to another macaroon, and said, “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here? Why have you finally deigned to return Henry?”

He placed his mug down with a gentle yet firm click.

“Why do you want to see the kids?”

The wallpaper flickered, turning from plaid to pugs for a second. “I beg your pardon?”

“You know what I mean Ma. Why now? It’s been-“

“Sixteen years.” She paused. “Well, if we’re counting meeting your wife, nineteen.”

Plaid, somehow brighter and more obnoxious than before, flickered back into the room. “It’s been nineteen years, and for as much as you mention my absence, so have you been absent in my life. In my family’s lives.”

Rita uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Hmm. Yes. About that. Henry, have you ever thought about…coming home?”

Now it was the man in the fez who was frowning at her from her walls. “I have a home Mom.”

“No, no, I meant,  _here._   _Our_  home.” She started to reach across the table for his hand, changed her mind, grabbed a scone instead. “This is still your home. And you are still my son.”

Her crosses began to fade back onto the walls as she went on.

“Henry, I know that things between us and you have been…rough at times-“

Henry snorted, cynical and ugly, and for a second his shadow sprouted antlers. Rita ignored it, like she had ignored many things in her life, and went on.

“My prodigal son, my wandering son…Come home.”

She waved a hand and as she did, the brown haired woman feeding the red headed children casserole became the woman leading her children in prayer, a shopping list that had far too many candy bars on it for her liking became _Footsteps_  once again.  

“Come home. You can even bring that girl of yours, we have the room.” Another sip of tea. “I’m not going to lie, Henry. Before we forget this nonsense, before we welcome you back into the fold there needs to be…repentance. Contrition. You will probably have to humble yourself before your father; he hasn’t forgotten that time when you struck him in the face before you left for college.” She thought about some of the articles she had read about Mab-about Henry’s wife. “An exorcism or two, probably, but don’t worry, New Canaan down in Dime Box has an excellent pastor who-“

And now Henry began to laugh, but in no way she had ever heard him before; ugly, harsh, and as cold as the grave. His fingers brushed his fork handle and there was a flash of the monster for a second but it was more, it was  _worse_ … Great branches of wood and bone glistening with blood shooting out of its back, skin crackling into bark, branching antlers that were ever growing ever reaching and terrible anger without end or ease….. And then it was only Henry again, laughter dying in his throat.

“I…you really think that don’t you? Think that I would drop everything and throw myself, my family, back into Hell at your word.”

“Hell?  _Hell?_! Henry John Corduroy-”

“Pines, Mom, it’s Pines.”

“Not in this house it is not! And how dare, how  _dare-_ ” She clutched the dainty golden cross that hung from her neck. “How _dare_  you say something so blasphemous so-”

“I think you’re really upset that I had the audacity to turn you down.” He poured himself yet another cup of tea. “But since you insist on being so blind, why don’t I show you what it was like.”

Every image of her Lord and Savior turned around, turned their faces away from Henry as he spoke. On the TV images flashed of Henry when he was still shorter than her, standing on a stool to help her chop onions, helping her put dishes away, putting a loaf of fresh bread in the oven. There was a toddler Henry sitting on the counter and tasting cookie dough for her, there was a ten year old Henry cleaning a bird, the stuffing he had made ready and waiting on the counter.

Rita snorted. “I taught you to cook. My my my that  _is_ terrible. You act like I poked you with a fork the whole time; I got you ready for the world, ready to take care of yourself until you found a wife.”

The woman in purple had returned in place of Eugenia, a scowl on her face and a nail file pointed at the camera lens. “Oh it’s not what you did, Mom, it’s what you didn’t do.”

The same images flashed on the TV but fast forwarded by five or ten minutes. Arnold, shoving Henry’s face into the freshly cut onions and spanking him when he started to cry. Arnold throwing the first ever loaf of bread Henry had made into the trash. Arnold shoving Henry off the counter, laughing as the toddler smacked face first into the floor. Arnold stuffing feathers into a crying Henry’s mouth as he yelled at him to stop being such a fag-

And always, in the background, Rita, arms crossed, face pale, and an occasional smile that would slip across her face.

Yet another scone went onto Henry’s plate. “You know, the first time Uncle Dan ran into me using the kitchen, I was so sure he was going to kick me out, even though I know him and Uncle Tyler better than that.” He bit down into the scone. “Also these would be a lot better if you added some vanilla and cinnamon; don’t be afraid of some spice mom.”

Rita shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Your father felt it was appropriate to discipline you, and as his wife, it wasn’t my place to intervene.”

The rest of the scone crumbled in Henry’s hand, scattering crumbs all over her nice table cloth and into the carpet. “Dad didn’t want me cooking but you taught me anyway.”

“I needed help.”

“You needed help, you made me help you time and time again even though Dad beat me every time I was caught. You needed help but you never thought to help me.”

Rita sniffed and pursed her lips. “You were young. You didn’t need help, you needed guidance, you needed discipline-“

“I…I  _needed_ -“Henry’s already pale face somehow got even whiter, like every last remnant of blood was draining from it. She could see his face go practically translucent, see the veins in his face, under his eyes and in his cheeks.

Rita didn’t think that blood veins were supposed to have a greenish tint to them.

Henry laid his hands on the table, and Rita pretended not to see the way that the veins of his hands were growing out, turning and twisting into vines and spreading across the tablecloth, and  _of course_  today she had to put out her good table cloth. The vines rooted themselves into the table, becoming part of the grain and tying Henry’s hands down more effectively than mere rope could. His eyes were no longer the warm hazel brown she saw in the mirror every morning but were the cold electric blue of the fire that the monster had been crowned with. He shook like a willow in the wind and maybe Arnold would have taken that for fear but she knew better.

Knew that it was anger that made her son tremble hard enough to shake the table.

“Guidance?” he finally managed to choke out. The lights in her room began to dim, the wall sconces replaced by neon beer signs. The plaid wallpaper was back, peeling more than ever, and the wooden planks underneath vibrated faintly. If Rita didn’t know any better she would have said they were  _alive._  The woman in purple had put away her nail file and now was shouting, screaming at the photo lens, her eyes glassed over and hair come undone from its bun. The brown haired woman was no longer feeding the children casserole but had ushered them behind her, wielding a bat in a most unladylike manner. The old man still no longer had an eye patch or fez, but his face was colder than ice as he hefted a gun in gloved hands.

“If I took you and Dad as an example, if I looked for you to guidance, all I would know is pain, and the best way to inflict it on others. You twisted everything you taught me.”

Rita tsked. “Henry, stop overreacting, it’s unbecoming in a man your age.”

He said nothing in response to her words but she winced to hear the wood of her tea table crack as the roots sunk in deeper.

“I could see it even then,” he went on, as if he wasn’t destroying one of her most precious possessions. “Even when I was young; there seemed to be a corollary in your timing. You always seemed to time when you needed me to do some cooking or cleaning, needed me to help balance the checkbook or read aloud to you because your head hurt….Funny how anything Dad thought was girly or faggy you always had me do when it was most likely he’d catch me doing it.”

“That…that female of yours has made you paranoid,” she replied, voice shaking slightly. “Looking for spookums where there are none.”

His voice was like the cracking of ice underfoot. “ _She_ has a name, my  _wife_  has a name, and I  _know_  you know it so I would appreciate it if you address Mabel as such from now on.” The roots sunk in deeper and upset her cup of tea, dark brown spilling across her tablecloth. In the background the TV switched from Wheel of Fortune to the woman Henry had married. She was dressed like a slut, shorts too short and shoulders bare in the sun, as she played pattycake with a red headed toddler on the floor, dressed like a slut as she painted the nails of a sleeping old man, dressed like a slut as she sat, legs splayed like a man, and crocheted.

A massive ridiculous curly straw sprung sight unseen out of Henry’s mug, and he leaned in a bit to take a loud slurp of his tea (and he knew, he knew she hated that sound.) “Mabel saved me, you know. I thought I was living when I left you all, when I went to college, but I wasn’t. I didn’t come back to life until I met her. Didn’t realize how alone I had been all my life until we started to date and she welcomed me into her family like it was no big deal. She brought me out of myself, helped me with fears I didn’t even know I had.” Another long, particularly obnoxious slurp. “I wouldn’t be the man I am today, would be nowhere without Mabel Pines.”

Rita looked long and hard at the tablecloth, and it turned back to its pristine, white color. “So my father and I should be glad then? Glad you shamed us by bringing some crazy whore into our family? Henry, I can’t believe you’d even _suggest_  such a thing.”

He smiled, faintly. “Yes, I shamed the people that sent me to school with a split eyebrow every week until I was fifteen by marrying someone I loved, yes that makes total sense.”

She sighed, and leaned over to pour herself a cup of tea. “I’m sorry to be so harsh son, but it’s just…I worry about you and as for the decisions you’ve made well….I hate to be so rude but I don’t think much of them.”

“I never asked you to,” Henry replied, but she felt goosebumps break out all over her as a chill entered her room, despite the roar of the space heater in the corner.

Rita shook her head gently, some of her greying hair shaking loose from its bun as she did. “If your decisions had hurt just you well, I would be upset, but I wouldn’t make such a big fuss. But you’re hurting your children now and-“

There was a sound like a gunshot as the glass of the TV screen, the glass in the panes of her window, the lenses of her and Henry’s glasses simultaneously cracked, the cracks jagged and angry.

“You know _nothing_ of my children,” he replied, fingers digging into the wood of her table like it was sand.

“I don’t need to. Not when I know what kind of life you’ve brought them into, the lives you’re forcing them to lead.” She looked down into her cup of tea, the leaves having settled into something that looked like a pine tree. She looked back up at her son again, and his eyes were burning blue, the whites of his eyes turning black as blood vessels burst and filled the sclera with dark red blood.

“I… Henry, despite what you may think I am not an unreasonable woman nor an uncharitable one. I could accept that your wife doesn’t… doesn’t go to New Canaan. Or any church at all. I could accept that she may… act a little more oddly and dress freer than she ought to. But son, she…well, she acts like a child herself. She’s a child, she’s _completely_ irresponsible-“

Her crucifix shifted, and there was a man in formal wear and bat wings crucified instead, forks digging into his flesh in addition to the nails, gold blood leaking from the statue and dripping on the floor.  

Rita ignored it and went on. “She courts danger Henry! She goes out and leaves you alone, goes out and leaves your  _children_ alone and need of their mother! And honestly, what’s more is she  _brings_  danger into your home.”

“I-“

“You cannot deny it son, no matter how much you may wish to.  What does she have to offer you? Vampires and demons and monsters at your door step that threaten your children? A con-man uncle; don’t look so surprised, we heard about Stan Pines’ ‘death’ up here all those years ago. A falling apart old house? She is the height and epitome of irresponsibility-“

“No,” Henry rasped, “No she isn’t-“

“She must be, it must bother you, otherwise you wouldn’t be denying it so heavily right now. It burns, doesn’t it, when she goes out and makes a target of herself; I see her in the papers all the time and if I see her, who else does?” Rita leaned in, the better to see hair that was beginning to curl at the edges from heat, curl at the edges from the licks of flame that were beginning to come out.

“You laid down with a serpent, with a witch, you laid down with her and brought her into her heart and she’s only going to bring you sadness and ashes in return. She has nothing to offer you but pain. She’s irresponsible, she’s completely and utterly selfish, and quite honestly Henry darling? An unfit mother. Those children of yours would be better off living with the wolves in the forest than with that woman.”

The walls were bleeding now, sap and blood oozing out of the pine planks, streaking across the wallpaper and pooling onto the carpet. The brown haired woman, the old man, the lady in purple, all of them now looked less angry and more worried. Even the crucified demon with the oddly fluffy hair and golden eyes had turned his head towards them, as if to look Henry in the eyes.  

“Take that back now,” he growled, her son’s voice shaking the room to its rafters.

“Why should I? Look at what her life has done to  _you!_ You’re not human any more Henry! You’re not the child I pushed out from my womb, not the child I fed at my breast. You’re a  _monster_ , you  _clearly_  have no self-control! In fact-“She took a sip of tea to whet her dry mouth and throat before she went on. “Between your wife and you, I think those children would do better with us, don’t you think dear?”

Henry began to flicker, flashing back and forth between the animal he had become and his normal appearance, despite the fact that he had failed to touch the antler handled silverware. Three, four flickers back and forth and the antlers were staying now, a part of Henry as they were the monster. The tips of the antler had burst into furious blue flame, smoke crawling up to the ceiling and leaving dark marks there. The kitten had returned, and was mewing piteously, winding continuously in and around Henry’s legs and pawing at his pants. Flickers went faster and faster, the change so fast it hurt Rita’s eyes and made her gorge rise.

“And your children see you like this? Know what you are? That’s disgusting,” she called out, scooting subtly away from the table. She looked into her son’s eyes and saw only madness.

(Inside there was a war going on within him. A war of will and fury, because the Woodsman was born as much from anger as fear, anger as much as love. The Woodsman was born of rage, nourished by forty years of pent up fury and pain that had festered and boiled within Henry. The Woodsman was here to protect Henry, had brought him here for answers but that time was gone, that time was  _done_  and all that was left was the fury that consumed him. And it was harder and harder for Henry to hold onto control, not when he looked at his mother and saw every word in anger she had ever spoke to him etched in her skin, saw her hands drip with blood indirectly spilt. Every word of her threats sinking into his bones and it would be easy,  _so_  easy to let go, to let his fire burn hot and bright and-

His mother smiled, a small nasty smirk cutting across her face. His mom smiled and it felt like a bucket of ice water had been dropped down his spine. He should have known, she had done this time and time before. But now he did, and now it was time to regain control of this situation.

The Woodsman burned, the Woodsman raged and screamed to be let free, to punish Rita as she deserved. With the iron will that let Henry stare down a demon on a daily basis and let him deliver himself from hell when he was seventeen, Henry wrested control back from the Woodsman, stood firm as outwardly his appearance settled back to normal, succored his other half with a promise of “Soon, soon.” The Woodsman tasted the truth of his words and nestled back inside of Henry, willing to wait for now.)

Suddenly the table was neat and orderly again: the wood, the cloth, the dishes all returned to normal. Her room was  _hers_  again, everything neat and tidy and blessedly back to normal as well. Her son was calm again, black clothes spotless and pressed, hair only slightly more unruly than usual and the crown of antlers gone.

“Well! I’m glad you came to your senses son but my mind is still made up. Now, let’s-“

Henry sighed.

“No Mom. No more. I’m done letting you distract me and I’m done playing your games. I want you to tell me; why do you want to see my children?”

“I’ve told you already. You and your woman are unfit to parent; I’m going to save them.”

Henry sipped at his tea. “Lie.”

Rita turned bright red. “How  _dare_  you-“

“Actually, I dare pretty easily.

Her eyes narrowed and she pointed a finger at her son. On the wall, the various figures of Christ affixed to their crucifixes began to bleed more profusely.

“You know me Henry, you know me like I know you. And you know, you  _know_  I would  _never_  lie about doing the Lord’s work. I have a mission to save your children.”

He nodded, a silent point in her favor.

“Not a lie but… I can see it on you Mom. You’re only telling part of the truth and I want all of it. Why?”

“To do right by those children.”

“No. Why?”

And now all the versions of Christ in her room turned their heads towards her, sad eyes with the weight of the world behind them.

“Henry, I thought you were smarter than this, than to keep asking silly questions. I’m telling you the truth.”

“No, you aren’t. Why do you want my children?”

Jon Wayne had joined in on the action now, squinting at her from his place near the garage door. The actors on  _All My Children_  had stopped in their tracks and were staring, dead eyed like fish at her. She felt some sweat pop up on her brow.

“Stop it, stop it Henry, stop your devil tricks  _stop it_ -“

The cuckoo in the cuckoo clock popped out without a sound, turning its head to look at her. Footsteps in the sand became eyes drawn on the beach with a stick, all looking at her. Great-Aunt Eugenia peered at her with a far too familiar look of shame and disapproval.

“Henry what are you doing to  _my room?_ ”

He took another sip of tea. “I’m not doing anything at all, though you still haven’t answered my question.”

This was  _her_  room, this was  _her_  place and it was being violated. This room was the one thing that was hers and her son was ruining it, destroying it with his filth and hatred and sin and-

The sound of her son dropping another macaroon on his plate brought her back to her senses. She took one, two, three deep breaths. Anger in a woman was unbecoming, and here in this devilish place she needed to be calm, needed to not be goaded into reacting. Around her her room obeyed her will and returned back to normal, everything (everyone) back into their proper places.

Henry looked at her inscrutably for a long moment, then sighed. He put down his mug and pushed it away from him, the steam curling up into the air. Henry leaned back into his seat, hands behind his head as he did so. Silence stretched between them as her son continued to stare at her. Finally Henry said, “Mom, have you ever thought about… I don’t know. Just. Doing something different?”

She peered over the top rim of her glasses at him.

“I have no earthly idea what you are talking about son.”

“What do you  _do_  all day Mom? You cook and clean, you go to every single service at New Canaan, you watch your soaps and-”

“And?”

Henry spread his hands on the table. “That’s just it. That’s  _all_  you do. Your world is so small and limited-”

“I will have you know there is no shame in doing what I do Henry.”

He nodded. “Fair enough; I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” His mouth quirked into a smile. “I do much of the cooking at my house too.”

She wanted to needle at him, whittle at the opening he had given her but no, not yet, let him talk, give him rope to hang himself…

Rita took a sip of tea. “What’s your point son?”

“It… Let’s be honest Mom. It’s too late for us to rebuild our relationship. You and Dad have done too much, and I don’t want my children or my wife anywhere near you.”

“How da-”

Henry sighed. “Save your outrage Mom, it’s starting to get tiring and repetitive. It’s too late for us but I don’t think it’s too late for you.”

The lights flickered briefly in the room as Rita asked “What on earth are you talking about?”

The TV flashed images of scenes from around the world as Henry went on. “Leave the house Mom. Get a hobby. Go exploring a bit. Hell, just volunteer at a soup kitchen or something. Just anything other than letting yourself stew and stagnate here.”

“Your father-”

“Doesn’t care about you, about what you do, not really.” He smiled, the same smile she saw reflected back at her in her wedding pictures, in her bathroom mirror in the morning. “Besides, we both know, we both can admit here that Dad would never hit you or try and stop you.”

Rita sniffed. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Your father can correct me whenever he feels the need to, as is his right as my husband.”

The smile turned into a smirk. “Sure Mom, keep telling yourself that.” The smile faded from his face and he looked down to his hand on the table. It twitched towards hers, before stilling again.

“Mom, I know….I know what Grandma and Grandpa were like for you, growing up.”

Rita froze. The TV flashed scenes from her childhood; an acceptance letter from college burned in front of her eyes, hours upon hours on her knees praying. Whoopings for playing with the boys, for asking for pants instead of skirts in the store, for raising her voice, for not picking up after Da and her brothers. Dour faced women old before their time worn from birthing and being tied to a chair to make her sit up straight and-

She shuddered and the TV turned back to her regular soaps, comforting and familiar.

“That… That is none of your concern Henry,” she said, voice thankfully unshaken.

“I know, and I’m sorry for that but I guess… You don’t have to live that life anymore Mom. No one is going to stop you from going back to school if you want or going to town more or… Or anything you want really.”

He looked into her eyes and they were no longer that odd electric blue but warm hazel again.

“Mom, please, I’m asking you, just…. Leave us be. Take this second chance, make a new life for yourself, and let me and mine live ours in peace.”

Rita was tempted. She was very tempted. How long had she been getting those flyers in the mail for the community college down the road? How many offers to go to Portland on mission trips to preach and save the sinners they saw on the street had she turned down? How many more cold dinners could she stand to have with Arnold, sitting in silence as he sullenly ate his food? Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to join that knitting club at the library and-

No.

_No._

She  _knew_  better than this. She was  _better_  than this. This wasn’t just her son in front of her but a demon, a monster. This was the serpent in the garden offering her an apple, an apple she almost bit into. He? Save her? Preposterous. It was him who needed saving _, him_  and his-

“You want to know why we want to see our grandchildren?”

“Uh, yes? I mean I’ve been asking for the last twenty minutes and-”

She leveled a pointing finger at him, shaking with fury.

“We’re saving them from _you_ , from your…your  _filth,_  the filth you and that  _whore_ have raised them in.”

The blood drained from her son’s face as she went on.

“I cannot believe I almost fell for your lies, your sin. Well, you won’t get  _me_ that easily. We’re taking the kids back with us; your father has friends with the police that will help us if you object. You….You sit here in my house and have the audacity to accuse me of doing wrong? Of sinning?” She barked a laugh. “The true sin is what you’ve done to your children. Letting them run wild. Letting those girls get ideas above their place. Letting them consort with monsters!  _Monsters,_  Henry! I’m taking those children into our home, Henry, whether you like it or not, and together your father and I are going to save them, make them better,  _fix_  them-”

Suddenly, the room plummeted into darkness, the only light coming from the eyes of the monster across the table from her.

“No.”

Thin, treacly grey light returned to the room along with a chill. Rita looked up and let out a screech of horror to see that the ceiling had gone away, exposing her room to a roiling dark grey sky; it was going to rain and all her things were going to get _wet_. The smell of damp fetid earth filled her nose and she looked down to see in disgust that dirt was somehow seeping through the fabric of her carpet and rapidly spreading across the floor. There was the sound of breaking glass and her head whipped around to see the window shattered, creeping vines and ivy starting to trail their way into the room. This, this couldn’t be happening, this was _impossible_ this was _her_ room, it _belonged_ to her _, obeyed_ her-

The walls shook and Rita let out a cry as her pictures and crosses, tiny painted shelves and the figurines on them, all began to crash down to the ground, shattering as they hit the floor. Wood began to break through the walls, first thin branches, then larger and larger limbs. Somehow, the TV and the wall it sat against was undisturbed but that didn’t matter. Not when there were blades of grass beginning to sprout from her carpet, blades of grass that curled around the legs of the table and chairs, curled over and through the toes of Henry’s bare feet. Birds began to fly in from the roof and through her living room, and in the distance she could hear….it was like no animal she had ever heard before and it struck terror in her down to the marrow.

She clung tight to her tea cup, the only thing in the room that still felt real. “F-fix this right now Henry,” Rita demanded, voice only slightly shaking.

The only thing that had changed in Henry’s appearance was the sudden lack of shoes. She should have been comforted that that thing hadn’t returned but she wasn’t.  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh yes. Fix it, just like you intend to ‘fix’ my children?”

The growth seemed only to accelerate and Rita tried not to fidget as the grass tickled her legs, tried not to imagine ticks and other bugs getting on her.

“Henry, Henry stop this madness please, I only want what’s best for your children, _please_!”

He shook his head and Rita felt her mouth seal up, lips refusing to open despite her best efforts. “No, no you really don’t.  You’ve never been one for fixing things, only breaking them.”

She struggled to retort, to defend herself, to refute the lies coming out of his mouth but he shook his head at her.

“No Mom. You had your chance to talk and you wasted it. No more.” The three little monkey figurines she had over the TV- they were heathenish but they had been her grandmother’s and she could never bear to throw them away- shimmered and changed. Henry’s slut wife took the place of Hear No Evil, though instead of hands over her ears she had on massive ear muffs. A tall fat girl dressed like a _man_ \- Cora? Acadia? – with clasped hands over her mouth was now Speak No Evil. A thin girl, taller than the other two and wearing far too tight leggings held her hands over her eyes- See No Evil. Looking at that last statue, Rita couldn’t shake the feeling that the figurine could see through the hands that covered her eyes.

He leaned forward and Rita felt the air around them thicken, darken. “You don’t _fix_ people Mom, you _break_ them.” Hear No Evil shattered, the sound like a gunshot, and Rita jumped in her chair.

“This was never about helping your grandchildren or wanting to get to know them or anything normal like that. No, this was all about control. It felt good, didn’t it? Having someone under your thumb?”

She had no idea what he was talking about.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said and _how had he heard her thoughts?_

The TV switched from the midday news out of Bend to scenes from when Henry was little, though to her mind they all seemed disproportionally related to Arnold disciplining the boy.

“Every time, every time I got punished, you were always there in the background. Watching. You never seemed to miss seeing Dad beat the tar out of me on a day to day basis.” A hundred different images of her, age constantly fluctuating, flickered across the screen. Henry snorted. “Half the time there was a smile on your face. It never seemed to occur to you that I would notice that, that I would notice that you were _enjoying_ seeing me get punished.” Behind her, Speak No Evil shattered, and bits of ceramic landed in her hair and teacup.

“I’m your son, I was a child, and I was completely under your power. Everything else in your world was out of your hands but me?” He shook his head ruefully. “I was the one thing you could control, the one thing you could do anything you wanted to.” He got up and began to walk around the table. “If anything made you furious, you could take it out on me. The jealousy you felt towards the women you saw on TV for living the lives you want; and don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you talk about my wife.” The TV flashed to dinner from last week, the one that had ended with her husband grunting that he was going ‘out’ and she knew all too well where ‘out’ was. “Not calling Dad out on his shit.” A flash on the TV, showing only her back as she stared out the window, at the car that was only ever used for grocery shopping and taking Henry to school. “The limits and blinders you put on yourself.” The TV flashed back to Arnold laying into Henry’s back with the belt, Rita watching out of the corner of her eye as she did dishes and hummed to herself.

“And the best part was, you didn’t have to dirty your hands at all, not when someone else was all too happy to do it for you. And now…” He breathed in a deep, shuddering breath before continuing on. “You want to break my children. You want to break their spirit, break their will to live, break them and make them as small and petty and miserable as you are. You want to break them because they’re free and their freedom disgusts you. You have your excuses, I heard them from Dad already but here and now, you and I both know that’s bullshit. You just want new toys to do your bidding and break again.” Henry slammed his hands on the table and the final figurine shattered. “ _I will not have it.”_

Her mouth unsealed itself as Henry sat down, and she took a drink of her tea, though there were pieces of ceramic floating in it now. Calm, calm, she had to stay calm… As she steeled herself, her room began to return to normal, the trees rotting and falling away from the walls, the grass browning and withering back into the ground, taking the dirt with it. Her pictures, her figurines, her familiar friends all returned to their proper places. The ceiling materialized over them, hiding the sky from her once again, and Rita breathed a sigh of relief. She could do this, she could win.  

“It doesn’t matter,” Rita finally said, her mouth still frustratingly dry. “It doesn’t matter what you do or do not want. We have the force of God behind us, as well as the law. Those children are mi- are _ours_ and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. I’m sorry you think that I won’t be able to care for them but they don’t need your coddling, they need saving.”

Henry, who had been taking a drink of his tea as well, put down his mug. “Oh? You would _care_ for them would you?”

Rita snorted. “Yes son, these are my grandchildren after all. Please give me some credit; I raised you to adulthood after all.”

“Yet I’m a disappointment to you and Dad; don’t you think that’s indicative of your parenting skills perhaps?”

“That is a moral failing on your part son, not mine.”

He shook his head. “What are their names?”

“Pardon?”

“My children, your grandchildren. Surely you must know their names.”

“Of course I do!” Rita snapped. “It’s Arcadia, Herman, and Wanda.”

“Well, it’s nice to see that sixteen years of sending cards to you guys did absolutely nothing.”

His back straightened, and though his touch did not taint her room, a chill still shook her to her bones.

“Would you like to know what your _care_ leads to Mother?” Henry asked, voice like poisoned honey.

“I don’t need to know,” she began to say, but before she could react Henry had grabbed her hand and-

Dying.

It felt like she was dying. She couldn’t breathe; she _couldn’t breathe._ She could feel the pipes in her throat swell shut, every bit of air that came in or out requiring an intense struggle. Her chest and throat muscles seized up and became hard as rocks and she began to shake uncontrollably all over. She scrabbled at her throat, nails tearing at the skin as if her frantic scratching would let air in that way. Her vision began to black as _she couldn’t breathe couldn’t breathe_ and Henry, her son, her son did this to her, her son was just _watching_ her. Tears leaked from her eyes and she fell out of her chain and on to all fours like some debased animal, and she shook as she tried to draw in breath and-

And suddenly it was gone, suddenly it as done, leaving her covered in sweat and ears, hair askew and clothes dirty from some left over dirt in the carpet.

“Your care ends with that. It ends with my daughter dying in this room, lying on this carpet. It ends with her begging you for her inhaler and you holding it just out of her reach because you think she’s, oh what was it you will say?” He shut his eyes for a second in thought. “Oh yes, because she needs to stop being ‘such a little faker.’ Dad will be holding Acacia and Hank back, but Acacia breaks free; she’s a fighter my girl. She’ll punch you and grab the inhaler out of your hand but it will be too late, too late for my youngest child because you let her drown on your floor.”

“N…no. No,” Rita rasped.

He gave her a look of utter disgust. “How many times did I go to school limping from a beating? Or racked with fever and it was the school nurse who figured out I had pneumonia?”

“This…this is just something you made up, this is just an excuse!”

“I don’t need an excuse to _keep my family with me._ ” He shook his head. “This is useless and I’m tired of going around in circles. We’re done here. I’m done arguing with you, and I’m done trying to save you. You would destroy my family and kill the ones I love. No more. We’re finished.”

He stood up from the table; Rita made to get up along with him but found that she couldn’t. She was rooted to her chair. She began to panic as she tried to move her legs, her feet, her arms and hands, _anything._ Even her head was frozen in place, her eyes locked down onto the surface of her table. Locked onto the sight of her hands laid flat on the table, fingers slightly splayed, nails done and her wedding ring askew on her finger.

Henry closed his eyes, breathed in, and his antlers blossomed forth from his head, the hands and feet unfurling like fruit on the vine from the tines. He breathed out and the tips lit aflame with that eerie unholy blue fire. His eyes opened and they were black from rim to rim. She couldn’t even cry out in horror, her voice stilled and frozen in her throat.

Here in this room there was a place for everything and everything had a place. The wall was pink, still as freshly colored as the day Henry had painted it when he was thirteen years old. Lacy white curtains that she had gotten from her mother let in the first light of the morning, the dawn of a new day. Crucifixes hung on all four walls, and each of the figures of Jesus nailed to them turned their heads away from Henry (no Mom, from _you_ ) in disgust and shame. Forty years of collecting various axioms, platitudes and sayings were reflected on her walls, but looking at them filled her for the first time not with content but a hollow, empty feeling, like she had been living on McDonalds for all this time rather than home cooking. There was her great-great grandmother’s old sewing machine that she had taught Henry to use, at least until Arnold had caught him at it, and beat his back with a belt until Henry bled. That was right of Arnold to do, of course, but her memory traitorously couldn’t help but recall the flash of pride that had gone through her to see how quickly Henry had taken to the old machine. Here there were couches and chairs that were covered in plastic, and every one of them held a shade of Henry sleeping on them, sleeping while she cleaned or darned Arnold’s jeans. Here bowls of potpourri exuded the smell of pine trees and apples. Here an old TV was sitting, showing a scene of Henry shaking hands with a dark shadowy man, their enjoined hands bursting into blue flame.

Here was her son, barefoot and in black. Here was her son that she fed at her breast, and an old, worn axe in his hands. Here was her son and for the first time there was nothing, absolutely nothing in his eyes. Silently, he raised his axe and Rita noticed for the first time a pair of hands that hung on his antlers that seemed familiar, awful fam _that was Arnold’s ring_. Here was her son, Death incarnate, and she knew too late what he meant to do. She sat silent as the axe raised, the axe fell, the axe cut into her flesh and-

Rita Corduroy shot up in her bed with a bloodcurdling scream. Arnold’s side of the bed was cold, her husband absent but she wasn’t surprised, it was Wednesday after all, and she knew all too well what he was doing.

She scrambled for the light, for her glasses. It was a dream, it was just a silly dream, meant to test her resolve in her holy mission. But nothing, absolutely nothing was going to keep her from gathering her grandchildren into her fold. Her hands didn’t seem to be working this morning but she finally managed to pull the cord. Light pooled over her bead and Rita looked down.

Thick, ropy scars completely encircled her wrists, angry red and bruise purple. Her hands were mottled and corpse like, the nails shriveled in their beds. They felt numb and cold and Rita knew without knowing that they would never be warm again, that she would never have the dexterity to sew or crochet again. Knew that no shirt sleeve or thick bracelet would ever be enough to hide the wrong that had been done unto her.

She looked up and there was Henry, axe and front covered in blood. He looked her into the eyes and then brought his axe slamming down into the floor in front of their bed, the blade embedding itself deep into the concrete under the carpet, before disappearing into the ether.

(The axe was unable to be budged, no matter how many priests they brought in to exorcise the thing from their presence. They never spoke of it.

They never spoke of their son or his family again.)


End file.
